JD78

Reading this thread motivates me to not give up! That's been tricky lately because it's been a bit of a slog. I had an enforced break of around 2 weeks due to holidays etc so I don't think that helped either. Forres Mechanics, now in Scottish League 1. 7 seasons in now and only 3 youth players are good enough for the first team. Also forced to use 2 youth players in central defence because my originals wouldn't stay so we're struggling this year. Bottom of the league after ten games. The board want us to avoid relegation despite us being huge odds on to go down this season! I was almost sacked last season but managed to survive on the last day with a lucky away win. I've had a few upgrades of the youth recruitment and junior coaching so I'm getting some good potential players coming through now. The trouble is that they will not improve! The u18s only play in a cup so I have to arrange friendlies for them. I've set it up for the assistant to sort that out but it doesn't seem to work. I do now have a reserve team too that play in a league so I can get them some 'competitive' game time there although they get a gubbing almost every game. The reserve team is an odd one. I was requesting a reserve team and the board always said no. Randomly a couple of seasons back the reserve team just appeared with a set of fixtures! Like I say though we get gubbed every game. In 2 seasons they have picked up 3 draws. Doesn't seem to help development at all and I think shows how poor my players are relative to the AI youth players. I've also tried carefully loaning out my players to teams that are fancied to do well in their league and promised to play them regularly. Again, very little development which is so frustrating! Everyone is part time and very low reputation so it's not helpful. The lack of youth improvement is my main frustration to be honest. It's hard to blood youngsters when they're so far off the standard of the original players. I would take a relegation for a season of playing the youngsters but I fear I'd get sacked. The reserve team has 1 member of staff and the U18s don't have any staff at all so this can't help. The board won't sanction any more staff at this time. Facilities and coaching badges have stagnated now. Board refusing to improve further until we progress further I presume. We do have a over 3 hundred thousand in the bank so money isn't an issue. I feel like we're treading water at the moment and need some of these young lads to get going! Or we need a ridiculous couple of players to come through and be first team ready. Good to hear everyone else's experiences and that keeps my attention on my own save. Thoughts were drifting to a new save this morning until I read here!

Youth intake player called Jonny Marr. Hopefully I'll be able to get a tune out of him.

Hi all. Just found this thread again and spent a good while looking through! I watch a couple of streamers doing youth only saves and wanted to give it a go myself to make the game more challenging or at least have a new challenge. I like using my local team which is Forres Mechanics from the Highland League in Scotland. I've done a regular save with them and taken them all the way so that's done. I'd really like to complete it as a youth challenge but there are a couple of issues. To use Forres Mechanics there are 2 options. Either wait for them to be promoted into the playable league or use a downloaded database. Anyone who has played the lower than playable leagues in Scotland using a database will know how difficult it is to get promoted from the Highland or Lowland league into Scottish League 2. So holidaying and waiting for Forres Mechanics to get promoted could take forever. In fact I don't think it's ever likely to happen, even in game. I've never seen them enter the real game world in any save I've ever done over the last few years! All that said, I started the challenge with a downloaded database and took over Forres in the Highland League. Perhaps that makes my effort invalid in terms of the 'official' rules but I'm sticking with it and that's my justification. All other rules will be adhered to, zero signings, youth players only! Hopefully I'll get involved with adding screenshots as I go along but here's the story so far after 3 seasons. 1st season - we had a couple of loan strikers already in the squad from Inverness (Championship) and Elgin (L2) who were way above Highland League level so I immediately set up a 2 striker tactic and went quite attacking to really get them involved and they were great. Their goals had us top of the table at Xmas by a few points but alas, their loan spells ended in the new year! I replaced them with a young squad striker (Morrison) and a veteran (Fraser) who did well in the same formation and we won the league. Very close at the end with Brechin coming strong. That meant a 2 leg playoff against the Lowland League winner followed by a 2 leg playoff against the team placed bottom of League 2. A promotion in the 1st season! Also in that 1st season I got a coaching badge after a new contract offer to get to National C. I employed a HOYD with Determined personality and 18 for working with youngsters. I still have this HOYD now and hope he'll start doing better. My intakes are not great. More on that later. The 1st season intake was bad. The preview said C, D, E rated players and there were no nice surprises when the intake came through. Understandable I suppose with very poor facilities and the HOYD had not had time to improve things yet. No elite talents at all, a few 'top' talents which were really not. Nobody anywhere near close to 1st team level or that I felt had the potential to be. I signed the lads with good personalities and those with 4 star potential but nobody has trained well from this group and impacted the 1st team at all. They'll all be gone when their youth contract ends. A great 1st season though. Season 2 - first season in League 2. My starting 11 was pretty consistent last season in a 4222 formation that suited the players I had so I stuck with that. I did need to use some of the last year's intake for substitute places but as described, none came close to 1st team level. That said, my Highland League winning team did me proud. We came 3rd in the league and lost out in the first round of the playoffs to Stenhousemuir. A successful season all told. A 'new' player to me was Henderson, an AM/STR, who had been out on loan last season. He went in up front with Morrison and I phased out the veteran, Fraser. I had this consistent 11 of existing players all season and noted that they were all quite young. 20 - 25ish and all improving, some very well. Will this make it harder for regen players to break in? Time will tell. Fraser was the only real veteran and being out of contract at the end of the season, I released him. I managed to get another coaching license to National B and also got an extra coaching and physio slot. I was surprised when I requested an improvement to the youth and training facilities and got both which put us slightly in debt. Earlier in the season they'd also improved junior coaching and youth recruitment. I was hopeful we might get a better intake. The preview promised an A! The reality was a little underwhelming. Just 1 elite talent that was a right wing back with an unambitious personality and low determination. Signed him anyway, being hopeful but our first team right back is 4 star current ability, still has 5 star potential ability and is playing well and still improving. He's a backup and will get games here and there and we'll see what happens. There were a couple of DMs with a bit of potential but poor personalities. 1 player intrigued me a bit. An AM centre (which I use) with a Model Citizen personality. He had 2.5 grey stars current ability when signed and 3.5/4 star potential ability. I know the stars don't mean everything but his stats were also bad. I wouldn't have signed him had it not been for 2 things. His personality and also his freekick and corner stats. They were by no means huge - 7 for corners and 12 for freekicks. Significantly better set piece stats than any other player in my squad. Did a bit of thinking on it and thought why not throw him in next season as an experiment. This is a long save afterall and I need to get young players through. His personality couldn't be better and the set piece skills could be useful. I was looking forward to what season 3 would look like with him in the team every week and I'm prepared to be patient and wait a couple of years for the improvements to impact the youth intakes. Season 3 - a very unexpected promotion! Possibly not the best thing that could happen but I suppose you'll always take it. A strange season and one in which persistence and not panicking prevailed after a very inconsistent start. We had virtually the same eleven as last season, shuffling in the Model Citizen experiment by moving one of the current AMs to DM and moving the DM to right back. This phased out the current right back whose ability had plateaued. We were playing really well in the 1st half of the season but kept giving away 2 goal leads to either draw or lose late on. Nothing I tried seemed to work to stop the late goals. We were second bottom and only Forfar were below us. They were having a dreadful season so I wasn't worried about relegation. I was checking the overall league stats and we were above average almost across the board so I kept the faith despite the poor form. Dropping the defensive line and changing to positive from attacking seemed to help and the form improved although we were never what I'd call consistent. We sneaked into 4th on the final day of the season to claim the last playoff spot. We beat Stranrar 4 - 2 at home after being 3 nil up and then 3 - 2 away to get into the final against Stenhousemuir who we beat in both legs 3- 2 again after being well ahead. The defensive frailties are still there but we're sneaking through with our excellent strikers. The Model Citizen experiment was interesting and I stuck with it. He ended up with a 6.8 average, 4 goals and a few assists. He played almost every game. The only time I didn't start him was when a striker was unavailable. My only backup striker is a 16 year old who's not even 1 star rated so I tended not to start both 16 year olds when possible. My Model Citizen did improve in star rating from 2.5 grey stars to 1 yellow star. Currently he's got 3/4 star PA. I played him mainly because of the set piece attributes. Despite him being our best corner and free kick taker, we didn't score 1 goal from a corner or free kick all season! I was also doing an additional focus on his training alternating between corners and free kicks. Despite this, his corner taking has dropped from 7 to 5 and his free kicks have dropped from 12 to 11. Another odd thing is that I was getting coaching messages saying that he isn't our best free kick taker and he shouldn't be anywhere near that duty. Even having dropped to 11 free kicks, he's still our best rated in this area by some distance so I can't quite understand that. We're a semi pro club so only train a couple of days per week. Next season I'm going to squeeze in more set piece routine training and see how that looks. Model Citizen will be staying in the team for now because nothing came through the intake again. Ok so to the intake for season 3. I expected the HOYD's influence to be a bit more apparent now. Halfway through the season we did get another increase to youth recruitment and junior coaching so that's 2 improvements on each now altogether. They both started at the minimum. I know it's probably too soon to impact this season's intake but I hoped it would be better. It was not. Having watched a few streamers and content creators and also seeing some of the intakes on this thread it's very frustrating! I see people doing saves with semi pro teams getting 1st team ready players, 5 or 6 elite talents, decent top talents coming through. I'm getting nowt! There were a couple with 1 star ability but bad personalities and low determination. Got to sign them up as I need the players now, particularly as I've just been promoted. I can't understand what more I could do? Please help if you can! My HOYD has a good personality and works very well with youngsters. He has a decent reputation. I'm holding on to the hope that it will improve as my reputation improves. We're now a 1.5 star rated club. I knew this save would be long and hard as this is part time football in Scotland but I expected a bit more talent coming through to be honest having seen other gamers' experiences. I'll keep trying to improve the facilities. Obviously spending very little on wages so we tend to grow our money a little. I have about £130k and about to start season 4. I'll be attempting to improve the junior coaching and youth training facilities again this year. Starting season 4 now. I'll try to include some screen shots from here as the story progresses. First season in L1 in Scotland. We'll be semi pro until/if we hit the Premiership I should think. Ten of the starting eleven are still the same players from the Highland League team but that's all that's left of that squad. The subs and youth team are all Newgens so there's no going back now! There was 1 DM that was out on loan all last season and he's come back 1 star current ability and 4/4.5 star PA so he's one that might break in. Also a GK with a driven personality might get a few games. Cheers for reading if you made it to here!