Someone help me understand Home Grown status in FM24 please?

[trviggo]

I'm really struggling to understand when a player is eligible for home grown status and when they are not, and how FM is tracking this this year. Of course the game tells you 3 years between the ages of 15-21, which would suggest a player has to be signed prior to his 18th birthday. We know this to be wrong however from both FM and real life precedent, which made me go hunting for more specifics on the rule. That turns out to be really hard to find, but another user on here from a thread in 2022 seems to have found it so I'll go by that for now. This reads:

Quote

An "association-trained player" is a player who, between the age of 15 (or the start of the season during which the player turns 15) and 21 (or the end of the season during which the player turns 21), and irrespective of his nationality and age, has been registered with a club or with other clubs affiliated to the same association as that of his current club for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons (i.e. a period starting with the first official match of the relevant national championship and ending with the last official match of that relevant national championship) or of 36 months. In the context of this paragraph, the season immediately preceding a player’s 15th birthday may be counted if his birthday is after the last match of the relevant national championship but before or on 30 June (winter championships) or 31 December (summer championships), and the season immediately following his 21st birthday may be counted if his birthday is on or after 1 July (winter championships) or 1 January (summer championships) but before the first match of the relevant national championship.

For starters, does this mean the player can join a Premier League club in all of July at having just turned 18 or 19? 

Football Manager 24 seem to think it's 19, but if I transfer a player at 19 in this date window, not only is he eligible for homegrown, but his homegrown status says he's fulfilled 200+ days despite having been in the club for 1 day. It can't be counting from season start because the first match day was merely 60 or so days ago and the season reset date roughly 100. Furthermore I could even transfer him after that pre-season date window. 

So why is that 19 year old eligible for homegrown in a summer league, having turned 18 fifteen months prior to his signing date two months after season start, meanwhile an 18 year old I signed during the summer transfer window five months before his 19th birthday isn't? 

By all means dumb it down as much as you can and provide examples. This does my head in.

Edited December 2, 2023 by trviggo

[tashansmith]

Bump on this request, I am really struggling on why this player is not considered U21 for UCL purposes given that he has been at my club for 2 years before his 21st birthday. The way the game calculates it seems so confusing

[DarJ]

58 minutes ago, tashansmith said:

Bump on this request, I am really struggling on why this player is not considered U21 for UCL purposes given that he has been at my club for 2 years before his 21st birthday. The way the game calculates it seems so confusing

I don’t have access to the game at the moment but usually it tells you if a player is eligible if his born before x date so although his still 21 he might have been born after that day.