danej

So, when you play like non-league to legend type of save or the like - is it ever rational to apply for jobs? If yes, when? I ask because I am starting to doubt whether it is ever rational. My own experience, plus what I have read on the topic so far, suggests that you should perhaps stay at the same club for a least two years no matter what. And besides, my impression is that it is generally hard to find a job that is a clear upgrade on what you have. That is, unless you just wait untill someone approaches you. My impression is that the level of job offers you get when you are approached is generally much higher than if you apply yourself. Applying for jobs might be detrimental to your wish to climb the ladder. You may get a reputation as an untrustworthy job hunter. But I don't know, I am not particularly experienced regarding this. what do you think?

What is your opinion on this? To elaborate a bit. For me, I feel like choosing between three options when it comes to individual traning intensity, which includes the automatic training intensity setting (double, normal, half, no pitch or gym work etc.): 1. Using the default setting. Which means never using double intensity; normal intensity even for the full green heart on the right side of the screen. However, my impression is that this is a bad option. The upside being very few injuries. But the downside being poor training and thus poor development of young players. 2. Using the default training intensity settings, but manually switching the full green heart to "double intensity". This gives more injuries - possibly too many? - but crucially this also results in much better traning performances and thus much better development of young players. At least those who don't get a lot of injuries. 3. Doing almost like option 2. But manually tweaking the training intensity of a few players; bascially looking at the physio recommendation; if the physio recommends "half intensity" and the automatic setting is "double intensity" for that player, I manually change it to "normal intensity" untill the physio no longer recommends "half intensity"; then I switch it back to automatic setting. The upside being that this is more optimal. The downside is that it takes a lot of time. If I do this "daily" (in-game), it might take on average half a minute or so for each "day"; and of course it can to some extent seem as pointless clicking. But isn't the entire game like that, we are in the Matrix hehe. By the way, I deliberately usually have a lot of injury prone players in my squad. And I want it to be that way. Personally I appreciate to play with extreme save restrictions to make the game tougher so to speak. One of them is that don't look at injury proneness when deciding which players to sign. Of course it would be more optimal to just not sign injury prone players and sell anyone who is. But I don't want easy success, for me it is boring.

A recent thread (enclosed at the bottom) made me curious - how does AI club management actually work? An example: I looked more into my current way of playing the game. And it seems like my young players are actually developing even worse than they would have if they were at an AI led team. That is some achievement by me, hehe. I think that probably the biggest single reason for this is that I had the default rest settings on "normal" training intensity for the full green heart. I know that every knowledgeable person has it on double. Unless they deliberately try to avoid optimizing things, like I often do. I talk about this in the enclosed thread as well. I used to do this too (upping the training intensity to "double" at the full green heart). But I went back to normal training intensity at the full green heart because I thought that double intensity would lead to much better player development than what happens at AI teams. As mentioned earlier and in the enclosed thread, I generally try to avoid doing much better than the club would do if it was AI led; try to keep performance at a realistic level. I hate when the game becomes too easy and boring. By far the biggest risk and weakness of the game for me personally. But it can be avoided by being creative. Anyway, now I went back to double training intensity at the full green heart. As a rule of thumb I like performances on par with AI. But I don't like to be doing even worse than AI. That is too much even for me. All this makes me wonder - I would love to know more about what actually happens at an AI team. That is, any club in the game but your own. How do they train? How do they scout? How do they recruit? I thought AI teams did excactly the same as what you own team does if you delegate stuff to the staff. But at least regarding training I think there is more to it. It is my impression that AI manages to develop young players better than what happens if you use the default training intensity settings (including the suboptimal "normal" intensity setting for the full green heart) and delegate everything regarding training, loans etc. to staff. This is interesting. It seems like AI does at least a few things smarter than the "delegate to staff" style would suggest. I like that. AI is bad enough as it is. It is a good thing that AI might be at least slightly better than I thought. And at the same time I get curious regarding how AI club management actually works in detail. Perhaps stuff goes on under the hood.

I know you are right. And that is excactly the reason that I don't do it hehe. I can see that it can feel rewarding. It just doesn't feel that way for me. I have tried it before, and for me it feels a bit like cheating, the game becoming too ease (purely subjectively). If I basically develop my young players much better than AI does, it is a big step towards to guaranteed long term world dominance wonderkid development factory. It perhaps feels rewarding and fun for a while. But for me personally, I eventually get bored and disillusioned with it, feel like I am just manipulating pixels or something. Which I know that we do in any case. I just like to try and keep both short term and long term performance levels on a realistic level and not win the Champions League with Sunderland within 5-10 years etc.

I actually go much further than this hehe. To keep the game tough, challenging. I delegate all scouting to staff. And I delegate most regarding signing to staff as well (the DoF). So regarding recruitment, I mostly do things like in a Head Coach challenge. However, the only and major thing I do differently is that I can veto incoming deals that the DoF has negotiated (or the HoYD for the youth squads). Since most of their negotiated signings are crap, this effectively means that I cancel most of the planned incoming signings. This means that I buy and loan very few players. On average perhaps just around three players for the first team squad per season + a varying handful of players for the youth teams. So, as you probably know already, by doing things this way, I rarely get my hand of great bargains and wonderkids. I enjoy playing this way. Recruitment is an area where it is incredibly easy to massively overperform AI, even with quite a few restrictions as the ones you use. So I take it to the extreme to keep a save tough. And I like it.

Interesting. I know that you are right regarding all this. Some of these things I deliberately ignore and don't optimize because, as mentioned earlier, I prefer the game not to be too easy which I feel it gets if you are not careful and creative regarding save restrictions, tweaks to how you play etc. Anyway, I just have one detail where I am not sure that you are always right. Regarding playing players "in the red": I feel like AI exagerates the risk when a player has played more than 180 minutes the past two weeks. Then it automatically views the player with a "high" injury risk, no matter how fresh he might be etc. In such instances I don't look much at the overall injury risk assesment, but look mostly at his fatigue level. If his fatigue level is "fresh" and his condition is peak, or sometimes excellent, I usually regarding as ready to play. I don't see that this approach increases injury risk. I never have jaded players btw. As mentioned I rotate a lot etc. to prevent if from happening. Feels that this works best in the long run. And probably in the long run as well since players with good condition seem to perform better.

Interesting. I thought that development was pretty much done at 24 even with the best of players, with the best personalities etc. But perhaps that was FM23 and earlier versions. And a good reminder regarding squad personality. The former part - I am actually doing something quite similar. Typically I review all players aged 23 and younger every 6 months. If they haven't progressed during the last 12 months, I typically try to sell them. No matter how young they are and how much PA they have on paper. I have the same impression as you seem to have - some just don't develop well, typically those with bad or neutral personalities I guess. And with those I guess you often get a better price when they are young and there are fools out there who think they have real potential.

I am pretty sure that you are right here as well. It is just that - regarding many aspects of the game I prefer to be lazy, to keep things simple. Regarding this as well. So far, I have never cared about attributes and haven't cared to learn to assess a player according to attributes. For a lazy man like me, CA seems like a great short cut, even if probably some times inaccurate. Also for me, it makes the game more fun and unpredictable to just assess players on CA/PA. Then I sometimes buy crap youngster who don't develop etc. I like the randomness, makes saves more unpredictable. But of course not optimal in the slightest. I don't like optimizing very much, it makes the game too easy and boring for my taste. I like to experiment with variours kinds of save restrictions and approaches that create some randomness.

Can you elaborate on this? Perhaps I already do what you suggest regarding this. Generally I rotate heavily. Trying to prevent fatigue and keep everyone fresh. It is also my impression that players often perform much worse in a match if their condition is low, so you might as well start a worse player in better condition. So, no matter whether the player is old or young, I keep their fatigue level at "fresh" most of the time. And they almost never get above "low" since I play them less when they are at that level; I essentially limit the playing time of a player at "low" fatigue level untill he is back at "fresh".

You are right. I was actually aware of it before, but I phrased my OP badly, didn't think of this. I guess what I meant more specifically is: When can a young player be expected to improve significantly? For example judged on the coach report - if a player now has Championship level CA, what should be his maximum age in order to expect that he will most likely reach Premier League level eventually. By the way, I also ask because I like to develop youngsters by giving them game time. So I will often prefer starting a youngster to an older player, even efter the youngster currently is 0.5 weaker than the older player in the given position. My experience is that it is a good long term investment. But then again, age is probably a factor. Such an approach is probably usually sensible with, say an 18 og 20 yo. But perhaps less sensible with a 22 yo who might now be far from his peak.

Premises: I don’t want to optimize training related player development. I leave training to the staff. This is one of many restrictions that I prefer to use in order to avoid the game being to easy and thus, for me, too boring. So please bear this in mind when you respond. Don’t consider personality. I am aware that the personality of a player is a huge factor regarding the extent to which a player reaches his potential. However, what I am curious about is what you can expect on average, for the whole lot of young players, for the «random/average» player. Like an average of everyone at a given age, including players with good/neutral/bad personalities. Untill recently I thought that a player could still be expected to eventually improve by 0.5 star CA or more if he was 22 y/o or younger. But now I suspect that this is too optimistic and just wrong (given the mentioned sub optimal AI-level training regime). I often, perhaps usually, see that players aged 22 or even a bit younger, don’t develop much (probably in part due to my mentioned restrictions). Right now I am thinking that the age when future improvement of at least 0.5 star CA is less than 50% likely (given my restrictions) is somewhere between 19-21 years. Probably around 20-21. I feel like often, probably more than 50% of the time, players older than perhaps 20-21 don’t really develop a lot. Anyway, any input appreciated. I still feel like I have limited experience regarding this. I am sure that there are many guys out there who have much more experience regarding this, have studied this more extensively, have a much better feel than I do regarding what should be to maximum age to buy a player for you to still expect him to grow his CA by least 0.5 star in the future.

I just started my first sort of non-league to legend save. My first save that isn't a one club save. So basically I want to jump ship to a bigger club as much as possible and as early as possible. So I wonder - when it is sensible to start applying for other jobs (jobs that are bigger than the one I have)? I imagine that it matters how long I have been a my current club? Perhaps I should only start applying for bigger available jobs once I have been at my current club for at least a year? Longer? I imagine that there could be a downside to just spam applications out at all times. At least in theory, it could damage my reputation and/or make it more likely for me to get sacked at my current club. But I am just speculating, have no experience regarding this. Any input appreciated.

Still looking into this, updating in case anybody else is also interested. If you want to do like me, delegating as much as possible regarding scouting in order to make the game more challenging. I notice that if you leave everything to staff (the Chief Scout), but just manually tweak some of his scout assignments, you probably need a national scouting scope no matter what. It seems like you can get away with chaning those scout assignments that have a global focus (Areas - Any). But you can't get away with having a more narrow scouting scout than your home nation. For example, if I manually change all the set scout assignments to just my own league, the Chief Scout will invariably create at least one new scout assignment with a national scouting scope (Area - Norway in my case, the country I manage in). I can live with that. A national scouting scope doesn't cost a lot. Seems like an OK practical solution where I maintain the pretty bad scouting that I want. And not least, I maintain the interesting signing lottery, let's see what the scouts and DoF come up with. The DoF probably still comes up with a few foreigners to sign from time to time in any case (one of my other save restrictions is almost like the Head Coach challenge - I can't sign any players other than those whom the DoF wants to sign - I can only veto/block the DoF's deals in or out, nothing apart from that; so I usually don't sign many players).

Example of one of the recruitment focuses. "Areas" - "Any" it a problem I think.

I looked into it, and the main problem seems to be the recruiment focuses. The ones to the left in this picture. As mentioned, I just click confirm to all recommendations regarding this in the recruitment meetings. Normally, this isn't a problem. But it sure seems to be in lower level management. When your scouting ressources and thus your scouting scope is very limited, AI seems to mess up and eventually recommend "any" area for many of the recruitment focuses. Which effectively means that your scouts start scouting a lot of South Americans etc. And as we all know it is expensive to scout outside your scouting scope which in my case is my own league and that's it (not even the entire country of Norway or at least more than one league). This makes me wonder - how is scouting done by AI managed clubs? They can't be messing things up like this, then all lower league clubs would end up bankrupt. I imagine that the don't do the stupid scouting outside the scouting scope that AI recommends to me.

As mentioned in the OP I do wish to delegated scouting as much as possible. As one of my many save restrictions, in order to avoid almost certain massive succes and thus the game becoming boring. But... I see that I need to do something. See the picture. Fascinating. Scouting costs have skyrocketed, up x20 or so from last season (this season is only 2/3 underway). Currently, I delegated everything. And I click yes to all recommended changes in scouting related focused. More on that in the next post..

IF you have, for some reason, delegated all scouting like I have (I like extreme and realistic save restrictions to avoid the game being too easy and boring, this is one of many restrictions for me): What would you do when the Chief Scout at time spend a sh*t load of money because he decides to scout a lot of players outside your scouting range? You know, the stuff where you have to pay around 3k per scouting mission. This is mostly a lower league problem I think. In my current save, this a bigger problem than ever before. I manage Arendal. We started in the third Norwegian tier, just got promoted to the second tier in the first season (by the skin of our teeth btw, winning a thrilling playoff final 3-2 after being 2-0 down at half time, 2-1 down at the 87th minute, and being given a soft penalty in the 90th minute). About to start season 2. We are still semi-proffesional. The standard of Norwegian football is not the best, their second tier is like League One level. Anyway - the Chief Scout has probably spent at least 150k on scouting during the recent main transfer window January - March 2024. He just keeps scouting a vast amount of old South Americans etc. in spite if our scouting range only being our own league. Of course this has a big negative impact on our tiny club. Originally after the promotion I had an 18-19k p/w wage budget. Now the wage budget is down to around 14k because I have had to transfer a lot of money to the scouting budget in order to cover the huge deficits in that budget. I was thinking that a solution could be to take notice and evaluate early when this stuff happens. It is probably better and less expensive to expand the scouting range during part or most a transfer window if you notice that the Chief Scout goes crazy with his scouting.

I don't talk about star PA for the player, but the league level of his estimated PA. As mentioned in OP. I agree that a youngster with a relatively poor PA star rating might still be a top talent worth keeping. It depends, not least on the general quality of your first best first team players who anyone will be compared to yes. And yes, my impression is also that personality matters a lot. Youngsters with a mediocre or outright bad personality rarely develop well is my impression. Edit: Guess what I was trying to say in OP is: Even if everything else suggests that you should keep a given youngster at the club, it might still be better to bin him of if his PA is just not good enough. He might turn into a Championship or League One level player one day, but so what, such players rarely rise to a good sell on value.

How do you approach this? It is a complex issue. Personally, I lean more and more towards a strict, selective policy. Keeping rather few, only top talents. Kicking most youngsters out of the club, avoiding hoarding second rate youngsters at the club. To be more specific, as a rule of thumb I sell/release most if not all youngsters who don’t at least have PA to play in a 3.5 star league or higher (except for youngsters that are needed in the first team squad, you obviosly need a senior squad hehe). By 3.5 star reputation leagues I mean the top leagues in countries such as Scotland, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico. Besides the obvious big leagues which all have a 4 star reputation or higher. My impression is that youngsters will most often not end up having a significant sell on value once their PA drops to a 3 star league level or worse. Along the same lines, my impression is that it will most often not yield a worthwhile, significant profit to keep hold of such second rate youngsters and do the typical development regime, finding them good loans once they hit the age of 18 etc. Often you can’t get the potential loan club to pay all or most of the wages anyway, which means expenditure. And as mentioned I feel like such mediocre youngsters will rarely end up having a meaningful sell on value anyway. At the same time I do like to keep enough youngsters around to have a decent sized squad size in at least one of the two reserve/youth squads that most clubs have. So that any top class youngsters can get meaningful match experience without getting dragged down by poor greyed out team mates who have a negative impact on team results and everbodys match ratings. However, my impression is that I can achieve this goa of having a big enough youth team squad in a smarter way then just keeping all the best youngsters around. More specifially, to fill out one of the reserve/youth squad, I typically use third rate youngsters on low if any wages. I keep youngsters around who are willing to either be on non contracts (for lower league management), or players who are willing to have «Emergency backup» status and corresponding very low wages (for professional clubs, perhaps at League One level or higher).

To elaborate: So in this specific example, I wanted to give game time to Malacia and a couple of other first teamers. Before the match, my instructions were magically removed, as seen with the picked players now being "red" and left out for some reason.

Added note: AI also now, on FM24 picks a worse match day squad for the youth/reserve teams when it comes to this: They don't rotate as well as in earlier versions. AI keeps starting the same players although they are not on full condition. And, unlike earlier versions, they don't prefer players with low match sharpness in order to get/keep everybody reasonably sharp. This also needs to be adressed. Get the AI match day squad picking back to the sensible, rotating style that it always had on earlier versions (when it comes to the youth/reserve teams).

The picture doesn't seem to have been attached, try to post it here instead Amrabat is the player who is "orange injured". Not very visibly obvious, but you can spot the edges of his "orange injury" if you look at ham. He is at DM / Deep Lying Playmaker on Defend duty in the selected players for the upcoming U21's match (he is not in my first team squad, have demoted him to the U21's because he isn't particualarly good, but that's another matter).