How to get more out of recruitment focuses?

[Undy]

Long time FM player but I took a break last year so the new recruitment focus mechanism is new to me. I've approached it in much the same way as I'd previously have used scouting assignments, but so far over two seasons with 13 scouts, the only good players I've found are ones I've "manually" scouted by requesting reports on specific teams. In fact, looking at player knowledge, it looks like my scouts aren't even watching any games. 

As an example, I'm playing as Rangers (so fairly mid-level players in the squad initially) and have had a scout on an ongoing recruitment focus In Paraguay (he already had extensive knowledge of the country) for around 18 months. The filters for the focus are ay position and role, transfer and loan, min CA 1 star, min PA 3 star, age 15-20. In 18 months, he has recommended zero players, and in fact when I search players in range and filter to based in Paraguay, there aren't even any players with scout reports against them. He has literally produced no useful knowledge. 

This is replicated across all recruitment focuses. Even the three scouts I have across Brazil and Argentina, which should have no shortage of promising young players, can't produce a single recommendation. I tried a different approach of a high priority assignment to look for a replacement for James Tavernier, and not one of the four scouts assigned found anyone. 

I'm a bit at a loss here and don't really fancy persisting with the gamey approach of requesting team reports on clubs with good youth systems. Can anyone give any pointers on why my scouts aren't finding players (or even generating knowledge), and how the recruitment focus mechanism can be better used? 

[NineCloudNine]

Have you specified that they search for players to fit your tactic? I think this means they search for specific roles, which when added to your other criteria (which are already quite restrictive) makes the search very narrow.

I do agree that they don’t seem to ‘accidentally’ acquire knowledge of other players just by watching matches. I have had a scout dedicated to France for a year but apparently my scouting department has no knowledge of Kylian Mbappe.

Edited January 2 by NineCloudNine

[Undy]

I'm searching any role and any position, so shouldn't be too restrictive in that sense. I'm also playing with the max database size so there are plenty of players out there who could fit the criteria, they're just not finding them. 

[wazzaflow10]

there's a bug currently. log your save game here: