Help Needed with Loans in Non-Leagues/Lower Leagues

[steve.battisti]

I play a lot in lower leagues. If you watch videos and so forth about how to get good players in lower leagues, the most common recommendations are trials and loans. I'm pretty good with trials/free transfers. But I have a question about the loan part.

Presumably, to get loan players who could start on your team, you need to look at the levels above you, because anyone on the youth teams in your current league probably aren't good enough to start for you. I read a lot about looking at Premier League youths, etc. I'm farther down the hierarchy, in tier 7 in England right now, so no one on a Premier League team's youth squad is going to be interested in me. But let's say I want to look at players in tier 6 (Vanarama North/South) or tier 5 (Vanarama National).

The problem is, these players are out of range for my cheapo scouting budget (which covers Regional Premier Division only). To scout them I need to pony up a chunk of money. It's not an onerous amount of money for one player, but if I want to scout a bunch, it will make a significant dent in my annual budget. (It's basically 1% of my budget for every player I want to scout, so you can see how it would add up quickly.) They typically won't come in on trial, so what's the best practice? Do I just look at attributes and sign them blind? Do I pony up the cash to scout them, and just try to be very cautious about how often I do that?

Generally, I haven't been able to figure this out, and the board won't give me a senior affiliate, and so I rarely end up taking advantage of loans, which seems like I'm putting myself at a disadvantage.

Recommendations appreciated!

[Hovis Dexter]

If you ask your scouts to provide you with team reports on the teams in the two tiers above you the reports will tell you which players may be willing to come on loan to you. You can then see if these players will be wiling to come on trial with you. I don't know the cost of having a scout provide a team report.

[steve.battisti]

1 hour ago, Hovis Dexter said:

If you ask your scouts to provide you with team reports on the teams in the two tiers above you the reports will tell you which players may be willing to come on loan to you. You can then see if these players will be wiling to come on trial with you. I don't know the cost of having a scout provide a team report.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will give it a try.