Youth Development

** I originally wrote this exactly 1 year ago to the day ! But i've decided to stick it up on here now. I don't believe that the youth development model has really changed much so it should still be current. The only difference, from my own speculation, seems to be that actually playing games and ratings don't seem to matter so much. While some parts are massively simplified, the generally gist of things should set you on the right path.**

I'm just posting this as a monster wall of text, I make no apologies.

There has been quite a bit of confusion and speculation on youth development on FML over time but i'm bring together here what has been confirmed by Rob Cooper(SI) as well as some of my own knowledge from how it works on FM which I believe is relevant.

The factors which influence youth development are:

* Player's Age

* Player's Potential (1-200)

* How much football they are getting

* Standard of football they are playing (senior/youth & competition reputation)

* Average Rating

* Manager's skills (coaching)

* Player's Ambition (hidden attribute)

* Player's Professionalism (hidden attribute)

* Player's Work Rate

* Whether the player is injured

* The player's morale

* Match fitness (ie no green boot)

Some explanations in relation to above:

Potential Ability (PA) – Every player in the database has PA between 1-200 and a Current Ability (CA) between 1 and their PA level. PA does not change and if a player’s CA hits their PA then they will have become as good as they possibly can. As an example, Cristiano Ronaldo will have a PA around 195 and his CA will be around 190 as he is a world class player at his peak. On the other hand a player like Toni Kroos may have a PA of 170-190 but a CA of 145 because he has not hit his peak yet.

As attributes increase so does a player's CA, once all the PA points are used up then a player will have peaked and no more progression is possible. I’m going to cover this in more detail in part 2 because it’s not quite a simple as that!

It is worth discussing how Judging Potential works now. JP sees one thing, and one thing only – it sees a players PA. I don’t know the ranges but I would guess that a player with around 170+ PA will be 5*. I have an old list of what these used to be but I’m pretty sure it’s changed recently and have no confirmation of new values.

The really important thing here is that high potential does not mean the player will become good. If he has low professionalism and ambition, which are hidden attributes you can’t see, then you have a bit of a problem straight away. Couple this with low work rate and determination* (this can also indicate that other hidden attributes are low) then your 5* youth which you are paying 15k a day to could be complete garbage. You also need to pay close attention to the starting attributes, if a striker has 5 finishing, he is never ever going to gain enough to become world class, no matter what JP tells you.

*Determination is a fixed attribute and cannot change.

The other most important piece of information that has been confirmed is regarding the standard of football your youth are playing at. Everyone has heard of the magic 6.8 but it seems this is not entirely accurate. Rob Cooper has previously confirmed that average rating is the most important factor in youth development rather than the standard of football! So averaging 7.5 in the youth team is apparently more beneficial than averaging say 6.8 in the senior team. Crucially though, if your youth player CAN attain an average of 7.5 in the senior team then he will develop better than just playing in the youth team. The obvious thing though is just to play them at a level they are comfortable at.

Also it is to be expected that younger players will have a lower average rating, so if you have a 15 year old averaging 6.8 in the U21s I suspect this is just as good as a 21 year old averaging 7.20+

Competition reputation is important to consider here because if you DO have youths that are good enough to play league games and crucially, are able to attain a good average rating then you should start seeing more progression. Senior friendly competitions are useful but official UFFA competitions carry the highest reputation and thus the highest development potential.

I would seriously be striving to attain at least 7.00+ with all your youth players for the best development. There are ways you can ‘fiddle’ this a little. Do you have potential star DLC ? Then play him DL because fullbacks tend to average higher in the match engine. Consider your corner takers and free kick takers for assists, penalty takers etc – anything you can use to boost up a players average rating. You obviously can’t do this for everyone but if you want to focus on a couple of players it is very useful.

Playing in different positions has no bearing on shaping the development of position specific attributes.

A lot of people seem to think coaching is not important but I think this a very big mistake to make because it can make the difference between an attribute increasing and it not!

Here’s what Rob Cooper said:

One other thing I meant to mention is that even though the attributes are displayed in the 1-20 range on the screen they are actually stored in the 1-10,000 range behind the scenes to give extra accuracy during progression. Because they are rounded down to be displayed a small change behind the scenes can manifest itself as a fairly big change on the screen. For example a player with 19 for finishing on the screen may have 9,050 behind the scenes. If they then drop to 8,950 during processing this is only a drop of 1 or 2% however on the screen it is the difference between 18 and 19 and so a red arrow is displayed and it looks like a drop of 5%. Rest assured though that for all processing the 'real' figure is used.

The skills have a 5% bonus per level, so Coaching 5 will boost positive changes by 25% - what this means is that if, behind the scenes in the 1-10,000 range, a player's finishing increases by 400 points it will actually increase by 500 points (the 400 plus the 25% boost.) If the player doesn't improve though the skill won't make him improve.

So you can effectively get extra progression for nothing! if you are just a couple of hundred points off something then it’s possible that coaching could make the difference between finishing 19 and finishing 20.

Attributes

I’d like to explain (try!) some of the more detailed information in relation to how CA points are spent and why certain attributes increase, decrease or simply don’t go up at all.

**disclaimer** I believe the following to be correct, this is how it worked in FM08 which appears to be what the model is based on (from memory and very simplified) and i’m fairly certain this is how it is working on FML. Rob Cooper has said that attribute points are spent in the same way as on FM so the following shouldn’t be too far off **disclaimer**

The most important thing to understand is attributes are weighted so an important attribute costs more CA points than an unimportant one and some don’t cost anything at all! I can’t tell you what the weightings are because I don’t know them and it is a very complicated system. I’ve tried to work it out via trial and error but not really got very far.

Put simply physical attributes are generally the most costly. Pace and acceleration are the biggest cost for most players. Every wondered why so many high potential youth players with high pace and acceleration are rubbish or not developing? The answer is because they have used up all their potential by having high pace because it is such a costly attribute to possess. I’d say this echoes real life because how many truly world class players have exceptional pace? So if you see a low potential player who has very high physical attributes then his career is over – that’s it folks, he has nothing left in him, he will not get much better. Most physical attributes are very costly because they are important to just about every position on the pitch.

The next thing to realise is that attributes are weighted depending on a player’s position. So it will cost a lot of CA points for a striker to increase his finishing, it might not cost as much for a winger to gain finishing and for a defender ? Well assuming it works like FM08, which I’m fairly sure it does… it’s free!

If a player gains an attribute which is not linked to his position then it doesn’t cost anything, no CA points, nothing! I wont list them all but they are fairly obvious, like a centre back gaining crossing etc. Just see these as bonus increases, you are not losing any potential development by gaining something which is unimportant.

The same goes if you see a dreaded red arrow! Look at what has decreased, has your striker just lost some marking ability ? It doesn’t matter! Players can be shaped depending on their position, age and other factors. Maybe a striker has lost some marking and tackling but that might have been put towards something useful instead like composure. This is often referred to as attribute ‘bounce’ although it does seem a tad random rather than useful in all honesty.

I can’t confirm the accurate of this page but I reckon it’s about right:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/fmr2008/freeattributes.html

Understanding the above is key to finding good youth players. If you see a 3* defender who has 15/15/15 tackling/heading/jumping but has low attributes elsewhere it’s not necessarily the end of the road. This means he has plenty of PA left in him to develop what is important to his position, his KEY attributes which could make him a top class defender. If you see a 4.5* player which has 10+ in every attribute then be wary, he clearly already has a very high CA so he might just not have it in him to develop anymore.

It can still be worthwhile signing low star players who look like they can perform in your youth team even if they will never get any better. Always try to find some older youth players with good attributes. The reason is, see Part 1, you need your players to get a high average rating and your team getting hammered every game does not equal a good rating. Also look at your current senior team and try and guess how many would have actually have been above 4* ?

Another thing I would like to touch on is player positions. If you come across a youth player who is competent in several different positions you need to be wary again. It actually uses up CA points just to be able to play in all those positions!

If these points have been used up creating a green field it may mean less green arrows. There is a second huge impact to this too because you are losing lots of free attribute potential. Crossing for a MC is free, Crossing for a ML/R is not free. So if you find a player who can play MC RLC and you intend to use him in MC, bear in mind he has to use CA points for ‘pay’ for his crossing ability which may mean less potential to develop something such as passing.

Did you know that GK rating for outfield players also uses CA points ?

The final thing I want to mention is the ‘preferred foot’ attribute. This is massively over looked by so many people on FML. It makes a HUGE difference to how a player performs and is worth a few attribute points in several areas. A dual footed player with 15 passing could actually be better at passing than a massively one footed player with 18 passing. In short, this is because there’s more situations where he’s likely to be able to make the pass count due to his ability to use either foot.

Whether this is right or wrong the match engine loves those two footed players and they will consistently average higher than their one footed counterparts. This is more notable in central players compared to wide players. (this could be a post in itself so wont go into detail) Why is this important to youth development though ? Well this is the single biggest CA drain, it uses more points than anything else – this is how important it is.

Hope this was useful, while I can't confirm everything here to be accurate, i'm fairly sure most of it is spot on.