WhiteCat33

Wow, hope you were able to put that Spanish mandatory fee release clause as high as possible as he could be the striker to lead your team to glory! You've got a great academy started

Welcome! You'll never play FM the same way again

LUX was a fantastic campaign, exciting you've found another historically Portuguese Club in Luxembourg! At least yours is mostly LUX primary players, so you should develop the national team better than I did. Seems the lower league LUX clubs really liked taking the big Portuguese club names.

Yeah, I'd say "Fairly Strong" especially if it is for non-attacking players (CM/CD/DM/FB). The Table I use in my calcs & Strikers in Spoiler:

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2054 Season 32 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: BDFSP are officially back with a nice solid squad again utilizing free/cheap players from America to supplement what Barbadian talent they can scrounge together. Wish they would spend money on their facilities, which are still just Basic, but at least they have built a new stadium that seats 7500, so they get some matchday revenue. Cup Performance: I was nervous about the final as our 21 best players were away for the World Cup, with then our bright English WB out injured we only had old stars like Carrillo and literal U18/reserve players to fill out the squad. Luckily Weymouth didn't show up and got themselves an early Red, so it was a straightforward victory. North American Champions League: 2053 Caribbean Zone: Another dominant performance, which is a big deal with Humble Lion in the group who have given us trouble in the past. Caribbean Playoff: Highscoring tie where we almost threw away a 4 goal lead in Barbados but managed a 4-3 victory. Then in Jamaica it was a more measured 2-1 victory seeing us advance again to the 2nd Round NACL 2nd Round I posted earlier about how frustrating it was to get Monterrey again. Unsurprisingly they put the pain on us: NACL Tournament Tree: A familiar face in Santos Laguna pushed Monterrey aside and then went on to win the competition. You can see the dominance of Mexico in my save with all but 1 of the QF places being Liga MX sides. Notice the only Non-Mexico side Colorado only made it in because they played a Honduran team. Squad: Overview: We have a strong GK, Midfield & Attack. Unfortunately we are still struggling to develop quality CDs. Starting CDs Couldridge is the best young CD at ~87 CA, who is just 11-12 in the key attributes, which isn't good enough to contain Liga Mx Strikers. Croney is tall and can jump and mark, but is awful at heading and tackling which is problematic. And then we have the older CD at 28 Applewhaite who has great Bravery/Aggression/Jumping Reach and then is just 10-11 in the core ground defense abilities. He's unhappy and will probably leave us in 1-2 seasons. My rotating 4th is an either footed giant Hoyte at 6'6", who is a good tackler, but again everything else is just barely above 10. Graphs: I've been lowering the number of players in the squad, which is why the totals have dropped. I might consider rebuilding this with Percentages so its standardized. What we can see is the nice trend of our Top 5 Player CAs as our new youngsters replace the retiring old stars. Player Profile: Carrillo: it is officially an end of an era as our Star #9 retires. I tried to get him to play one more season with us, but he decided it was time. Even without speed he was more than adequate domestically. With the World Cup squads he got to lead the line scoring a goal and captaining his final game in our colors raising the domestic Cup. Transfers: I let probably more players go this summer than i should have, particularly Croney at DM. We might have a crisis in 2 years as a lot of players are unhappy and probably will either force a FT or an early exit. Loans haven't really helped develop players and I probably will stop doing so especially to domestic Barbadian teams. Nurse Departure?? The only way to get Nurse to extend his contract earlier was to give him a 1.1M release clause. It was much tighter than I wanted, but it wasn't an issue until this absurdity happened: Yes, that is a club in Martinque who have $35 Million Dollars to burn. They can't even qualify for the NACL, so you would think Nurse wouldn't want to go to a lower league where he can't get continental football: Good Decision! Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: Last table with Carrillo who managed 619 goals in 503 Appearances. Interesting to note how the above Best XI record is missing a lot of his games/goals. Maybe it isn't counting continental games? I expect him to hold these two records forever. Head Coach: Nothing new Club Improvements: With the World Cup payments combined with our Gate Receipts, Cup winnings (1.4M) and a gift of 800k from the board we are doing both a Training Facility & Stadium Upgrade. Still no Youth Facility Option Youth Academy: HOYD: C Mighty is up to full 2* Reputation now. His tactical style fluctuates between Gegenpress & Fluid Counter-Attack, which is fine by me. He's been HOYD for 6 intakes now, so is fully in control of our youth lottery. Youth Intake Preview: Guess we have a youth hangover after last year Youth Intake: Wasn't as bad as anticipated, but still not great especially with personalities. Top 3 Players: 3 Top Talents makes it pretty straightforward. None are fantastic, but I can work with Harding and Brathwaite. While I need WB-R depth an unambitious Lloyd isn't very helpful. Still no decent Centerbacks! Excel Tables: Barbados National Team: World Cup For the second time this save Barbados have made a WC Group Stage! 20 of the 26 players in the squad are from our current team, 1 is our play on loan at Weymouth, and 2 are players we transferred out and played their season at BDFSP. While the manager selected 3 English players for the primary squad, he only kept Lemar Highland of Brentford for the final team. While I was hopeful with draws of Morocco and Norway it was a total bloodbath. Not a goal scored against either as we make a group stage exit. Moving forward with the rest of the year Barbados is promoted back to Division A of Nations League and drew a very reasonable group of Honduras and Panama, though the former has been fantastic in this universe. Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Lloyd England U20s: Amazingly our WBL is the starting LB for the England U20s and has played 6 of 7 matches with more often than not a very good performance against very strong opponents. He had a slight injury this year, but has recovered completely, and is easily one of our best players at just 16. Barbadian’s Around the World: English Academy Players: MLS Academy Players: Caribbean Academy Players: Other Nations: CONCACAF World Cup Performance: Group Stage: Only Canada and Mexico advanced. Barbados, Jamaica & USA all failed and finished 3rd in their groups. 2nd Round: Canada beat Syria Mexico lost on Pens to the Netherlands 3rd Round: Canada lost to Denmark Tree: France win it all & Columbia beat Denmark in the 3rd Place Match. Summary About what I expected in the NACL once I saw the Monterrey draw. We need to get some CDs & DMs through our intake instead of our heavily attacking focused players to rebuild our backline. Until that happens there's not much hope of containing the Liga Mx top teams who boast very potent offenses. Even with our best striker of the save retiring this year Carrillo has been fully replaced by Nurse and our switch to a 3-4-3 Wide is working really well with the emergence of our dominant WBs who combine very well with wide strikers who cut in and cross/score. I expect more of the same for the next few years, which unfortunately means I don't see a completion on the near-term horizon with a number of my starters 28. Of course, this can change in an instant with the appearance of an unbelievable CD, which easily could happen, but I am not holding my breath. More I'm hoping for a board takeover that hopefully resets us with a more ambitious chairman who will permit the next Youth Facility Upgrade.

I swear these draws have to be rigged for Mexican teams to get non-Mexican opposition. And of course we get the hardest of the teams available... In brighter news Barbados Qualified for their 2nd World Cup! I just realized I forgot to include it in last year's update: And Barbados have a new record World Ranking of 91! 2nd Edit: Promise final edit here, as the groups for the World Cup were drawn and Barbados actually got an okay draw with Morocco and Norway. Still a very outside chance of advancing above either of them, but it's at least not a world heavyweight. Way better than Jamaica's draw (as the only other Caribbean Nation at the WC). Other CONCACAF: Canada got host Spain USA got Paraguay and Scotland Mexico have what has been a pretty strong Croatia side (finished 3rd in the WC this save)

Is it impacting your ability to sign players onto contracts? Caribbean success is all about keeping hold of players, so as long as you can do the 'next season' contract signing of non-contract players I would run the deficit. In the carribbean you won't make enough money to improve facilities until you're regularly advancing in the CCC, so priority is to become the regular champion of your country by any means. This can easily mean running a deficit and stretching finances for a few years even letting the board do debt financing to try and cover the deficit.

If you have a mentor with high consistency and who will give significant influence on the mentor group consistency can be improved along with the other hidden attributes that make up personalities including big matches. In my Perfectionist Striker mentoring group our star player and mentor Carrillo has high consistency and good big matches. Nurse (my protégé and current star striker) started with mild inconsistency and (i believe) mild big Match negative. Now he's up to neutral big match (no icon in either) and slightly positive consistency. I unfortunately haven't been accurately tracking those to attributes so can't show any data across the group, just had noticed that specific example and found it interesting. Not sure if good game performances for younger players help improve that as well? Same with training level, making sure they are happy with their training assignment?

He's still 15: we are only in September after he generated in July. I figured with the switch England would show interest in him, but already a U20 call up. Could he be our first Wonderkid?!? Unfortunately for us had Barbados intake been in the Winter he could have joined the English U20s on their run to the U20 World Cup Final!

He's something special for sure! I was shocked when I was able to set up his initial contract as a 3+3 w/o a release clause. Pretty quickly he switched his primary over to England, so here's to hoping I'll get the absurd feat of an English International in Barbados His Debut in the NACL against a relatively weak Martinique side sees him get a Goal an Assist and Man of the Match. Off to a roaring start!

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2053 Season 31 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: Cup Performance: Slightly embarrassing it took ET to take down Empire Club who are actually in the division below us this year, but we got the job done eventually. North American Champions League: Caribbean Zone: We dominated our group, so happy to see we are now clearly the best team in the Carribbean. Caribbean Playoff: The team that actually gives us the most trouble is surprisingly Cibao in the Dominican Republic. We made it through 2-1, but they and Harbor View in Jamaica are the only teams to regularly challenge us. NACL 2nd Round We drew Chivas, who are the Mexican Only team. How did we do!? NACL Quarter Final If we survived Guadalajara we would be matched up with CD Cruz Azul. How did it go? NACL Semi-Final NACL Final NACL Tournament Tree: NACL Awards: Reserve & U18s: We got invited back to Italy again for the Tourney, but didn't escape the group stage this year. We also get notifications for the U20 Copa Libertador's, but never get added into the group stages. Squad: Overview Graphs: I didn't make the changes I mentioned last season, but did remember to include the full team CA Range stacked Bar graph. The big drops in total players are when I forget to include the Reserve & U18 players in my exports. Star Player Highlights As it's been a minute, I figured it's worth screenshotting the key players in the squad. You'll notice 4 are strikers, then there is our GK, DM and WB-R/CM. New Formation: With the decline of Carrillo we are now to the point where he's the 4th best striker to choose. Unfortunately, his replacements really are better as wide strikers than central strikers due to their speed and lack of finishing. Thus, after our NACL departure I started playing a 3-4-3 Wide to utilize them better. I'll keep our classic 3-5-2 1DM 2CM for when I want to focus play down the center, but might consider changing our 3-5-2 3CM formation into a 3-4-3 3STC formation as our "attack" strategy. Transfers: Trying to utilize loans to develop players, but it's honestly hit or miss especially domestic ones due to how much better our training facilities are than everyone else in Barbados (and most in the Caribbean). We seriously need an American affiliate to loan-farm development. Nurse Contract Renewal: The huge news this year was after compulsively checking him every week Nurse finally agreed to negotiate a new contract with the club! He has been unwilling to for atleast 3 years now, and his contract was up in 18 months, so we were almost out of time. I promised him the world and set a new record wage at 7.25k p/w, but the NACL Golden Boot winner is worth it. As a 2+3 deal this will keep him at the club till 32, which is perfect. Downside is the 1.1M release clause, but it was 825k and we survived that so maybe I'll keep him the whole time. Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: I keep doing these after the tick-over for the NACL (as I export on intake day) so the season stats are low again, but they do have all league and cup games. Head Coach: Nothing new, still have a few years till we hit the glorious 1000 competitive games. Club Improvements: Nice quick little stadium expansion that we did during preseason. We did our first expensive Training Facility Upgrade bringing them up to "Superb" by the spring. Unfortunately, there is still no Youth Facility option and we have yet to have a board takeover succeed. Playing the waiting game now. Facilities: Youth Academy: HOYD: Gave my HOYD another coaching badge, it didn't change his abilities. Youth Intake Preview: Oh boy was I excited. I can't remember the last time we had an A rated prospect Youth Intake: YESS!! Not sure how a French Algerian got lost in Barbados, but that's fun. Top 3 Players: Arantes Lloyd: Like my GK recently this WB has me speechless. I used the large screenshot to show, not only does he have great attributes, but he is also Highly Consistent and Resolute. If I was forced to say something negative he's short and not quick, but his ability and potential will easily overcome that (and hopefully gain some speed as he develops). For once the game gave me a true A rated player when it promised one. After him it's a large drop off. I like Renaldo Holder even with Fickle, as we are in desperate need of WB-R. And then Shane Grant has the basics to join the Perfectionst Striker mentor group and maybe bump up that potential. Excel Tables: Intake is all around awesome (for a minor nation) and a true Golden Generation producing our 2nd best player of all time in A Lloyd with 3 more players who are good enough to work their way into our rotations and phase out older players. Let's see if the improvement can be the start of a trend especially in the player mentality department. Barbados National Team: English Players: We have a new English generated Barbadian in the squad with Sheran Forte who is on loan in Iceland from Tottenham. The only English-generated player in the squad is the AML, so if he actually declares Barbados [could happen if he plays all the WCQ matches] then both wide attackers will be playing in Europe! For the Belize game he is joined by a new Brentford Player who has formally declared for Barbados at only 23! That gives us two "Brentford Bros" in the wide AM positions. Here are all the players on the squad from outside of Barbados. Rashard Harte, Terence Soares and Shane Brathwaite are all from our academy. Performance: Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Summary: Well again I can't be too upset of how we bowed out of the NACL. We are losing to literally the best team of the year in North America and we are soundly not as good as those team. The positive is we are becoming the clear best team in the Caribbean and are slowly showing we can hold our own against the 2nd rung of Mexican sides. Hopefully we have the start of a Golden Generation that will deliver some more star talents like our LB and GK recently. If one could finally be a CD that would be amazing. All of ours are barely good enough (like 11-12 abilities), and we could use a star to anchor that back line.

It gets better: forget who it happened to, but their board sold off all their training and youth facilities on them for peanuts.

Fantastic sale! I could see it going over 10 especially if he gets a magical senior CAP for Belgium. Just watchout for the AI being dumb and not renewing his contract. Brave man fighting the finances there.

League rules in Slovenia only allow players 17 and older. Had a great campaign there last year with an extended LL database. Pretty sure that restriction is common for multiple nations in the region.

Glad it worked! Wish there was a way to utilize the conversation properly, but its (IMO) a bugged interaction. The unhappiness from 'desires a stronger squad' is a little harder to get over than the transfer one you had. One of my star strikers has been upset for 2 years now due to it, and I have 2 left for him to get happy before I'll lose him. I expect I'll lose him sadly, downside of mentoring him up to Perfectionist...

I'm still playing on FM23 so don't know how it's changed but I've found its honestly better to just decline to do the conversation. Yes they get unhappy, but you don't push them to the 'i'll never be happy again' level where they demand to leave which seems to be the outcome for almost every option made available for you. If you have your players on long enough contracts you can usually wait out the general unhappiness for declining a transfer and set up the next contract in the short window they are actually happy. That's how I've held onto my players.

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2052 Season 30 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: CHAMPION Cup Performance: CHAMPION North American Champions League: 2051 Caribbean Zone: This group didn't trouble us. Good to see the squad has progressed to now I'm less worried about the first part of the NACL. Caribbean Playoff: Cuban team Ciego de Avila wasn't too hard of a challenge. NACL 2nd Round We drew Monterrey who are fantastic in our save. NACL Tournament Tree: And who won the NACL….? Yeah the monsters Monterrey. Real unlucky on our draw. Squad: Road View CA Road View Graphs I have the same graphs for the full squad now that I made for the youth intakes last year. Only additional graph I'm considering is to add the CA Avg of the First XI (sort by minutes?) to the Top CA tracking. Downside to that is I only added Minutes into the export like 15 seasons or so ago. Also for the 2 or 3 Pro, Amb Det I should probably add in Prof+Amb to have all the combinations. Monterrey Out of curiosity of how strong they are I exported the team to the CA Calculator. Yeah, the results are not pretty, the fact we were within 1 goal of them in the tie is an absolute miracle From a Salary perspective we have about a 25x discrepancy. They have also done fantastic in competitions getting a shocking 2nd place in the Club World Championship Transfers: Shockingly I held onto my players and got my young star GK onto a non fee release clause contract. I got so close to losing Nurse (my younger star striker) Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: Head Coach: Up to 900 now Club Improvements: Probably the final ground expansion Youth Academy: HOYD: Youth Intake Preview: Pain incoming... Youth Intake: Well, considering what we were promised I'll take this. Top 3 Players: Pretty easy with 3 Top Talents, and they are okay I guess. Most exciting mart is 2 are wingers that I can retrain easily into WBs. Third is a striker who is small and not quick, so not quite sure where that leaves him. Excel Tables: Pretty poor CA & Personalities (no Prof. or Amb.) Worryingly we are seeing a meaningful drop off in CA the past couple intakes. The biggest issue I'm running into is holding onto U18 Managers. Because our Youth team win the league every year these guys get huge reputation (for Barbados) and are very quickly poached by awful teams in the country. I really think having an unstable U18 manager is detrimental to intakes. Barbados National Team: Barbados easily returns to Division A. Look at that Goal differential! This year is all friendlies until WCQ in October. We got a very nice first draw of the very poor Belize. Hopefully after that is someone easily overtaken. Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Summary We had an awful NACL draw against the reigning champions of North America, and while we put up a valiant effort it was doomed from the start. Carrillo is on a 2 more-year contract and has announced his intentions to retire at the club like the legend he is. Next year he will become more of a rotation option off the bench as my younger strikers are quick and putting in good performances. I'm worried about the academy. This is the problem I started to see in St Vincent about this deep into the save where instead of holding a strong academy we started seeing a major drop in the intake quality which stagnated the game. Carrillo aside, the team is pretty young with the majority of starters around 25 now, so we have time to weather a dip in intakes.

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2051 Season 29 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: CHAMPION While we are still comfortably winning the league its nice to see that BDFSP are slowly coming back into a competetitive side. It helps that the Barbadian BFA is ranked 3rd in North America! Cup Performance: CHAMPION The Barbadian FA was kind this time and let me postpone the cup final for almost a whole month to put it past the Gold Cup. I'm sure the opposition wasn't happy about it as we obliterated them with our rested first team. North American Champions League: 2050 Caribbean Zone: This was a tough group and we just barely won our games against Cibao and Humble Lion. Caribbean Playoff: We blew Waterhourse out 5-0 in the first leg at home in Barbados, so I was able to take some punches in Jamaica and still exit the tie with a nice 5-2 Agg victory. NACL 2nd Round In Mexico it was the opposition for once that had a 91' defensive lapse for us to absolutely steal a 1-0 victory. This was crucial as when they came to Barbados even though we got an early 2-0 lead their lethal offense clawed the game back to 2-2. Thankfully my ramshackle defense held on for dear life and we made it through! NACL Quarter Final Absolute heartbreak for us here. In Mexico we were soundly defeated 3-1, but the 3rd goal was a careless defensive tackle in the box gifting them a penalty. With a 2 goal deficit to climb our fearless leader of the line Carrillo and his protege Nurse put 3 past their keeper, but of course they got 1 past ours for a deadlocked 4-4 with the same number of Away Goals. In the NACL there is no Extra Time so it went straight to a shootout where we lost 5-4 with our set piece taker flubbing his shot and our keeper failing to stop any of theirs. NACL Semi-Final NACL Final Yet again, the opposition that knocks us out makes it to the final. Reserve & U18s: Our Reserve side was invited back to Italy, and this time we edged out Juve youths to win our group on goal differential. Unfortunately, our run ended immediately after falling to BRG, who even with unloaded leagues are still producing steller Portuguese youngsters. Squad: We now have 3 strikers, 1 DM and 1 GK who are at the level of the Mexican clubs who we are battling it out against every year in the NACL. Only Carrillo is old, with the other 4 25 or under. Transfers: Nothing significant. Best XI: Excel Tables: Head Coach: First International Job offer Club Improvements: Finished the stadium expansion & Training Facility Upgrades For all these stadium upgrades I've been relying on the Board taking out loans. Taking a look at them they are actually being competent for once getting financing! According to Interest Rate Calculator (financialmentor.com) Our most recent 10 year loan for $2M is only at a 3.47% Interest Rate. 50k monthly payments is totally manageable when we are bringing in over 300k in Gate Receipts per match. Facilities: Youth Academy: HOYD: Youth Intake Preview: Pain incoming... Youth Intake: Yet another GK... Top 3 Players: And the best is…Another GK. If he was any other position this level of ability would be fine, but for the 3rd year in a row we’ve generated a GK as well as our academy has a poached GK in England, so enough with the GKs already! Followed by a pretty poor midfielder and a bad personality left back. The rest is truly awful. And this academy produced a 120 CA player last year? Excel Tables: Here is where the CA Calculator is helpful as even though this intake is rated trash, and the stars are all trash, the top player is actually at the level we should be expecting out of this academy. Just don't make it a GK next time please!! I've been tinkering in excel and have built a new slew of graphs. The first two pairs are tracking the number of players in each intake who have a minimum level of Professionalism, Ambition and determination. As a reminder, while Determination is the actual number shown, for Professionalism and Ambition I'm taking the middle of the possible range their Personality + Media Handling sets. Greater than 10 (Excluding) This is basically showing how many players are at least partially competent mentally and have a realistic chance of being mentored into okay personalities (the "Fairlies") at this mature stage of the save. 15 or Greater (Including) This is important because 15 is the value at which you can expect to get optimal development out of players. here we see the worrying trend of these lines falling with my new HOYD even though he is a Model Citizen. Granted, it's still way too early in his time at the club (3 Intakes) to draw any conclusions. I then Graphed the full intake Determination Averages again. And finally have started to visualize the CA ranges that the intakes are producing. The first graph plots each of the top 5 players in the intake and then has a line for the CA of these players averaged together. The second stacked bar graph then shows the changing distribution of the 15 CA ranges I (arbitrarily) set up. The first gives me insight into the progress of the top-talent production of the academy [which is what matters most in a small nation save like Barbados]. The second shows the depth of the talent production. Barbados National Team: Barbados had the Gold Cup this year, how did it go? While they did very well to advance to the tournament proper, it was a poor showing that saw them tossed out at the group stage. In the Fall Nations League returns with what should be a easily winnable group considering they just beat Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Gold Cup. Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Summary This really should have been our year and that penalty defeat hurt. Unfortunately, the machine that is Carrillo is starting to show his age and has begun declining in the latter half of this year. Next year he will still be more than quick enough to perform at his regular level, but he doesn't have many years left to see a NACL Final. Next year we will have our new young star GK fully ready for the big stage and hopefully he can make up for our woefully inadequate central defenders. Can we do it next year to send off Carrillo on a high?

congrats @the_hdk! Enjoyed your first story of youth glory

Brutal, there has to be something in the game's coding that pushes these clubs to want to abandon old real stadiums.

Best part is he's pure Barbados so at the very least the national team will have the best Caribbean shot stopper for the next 20 years!

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2050 Season 28 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: CHAMPION Cup Performance: CHAMPION North American Champions League: Haven't played this yet. Will add in Edit. Caribbean Zone: d Caribbean Playoff: NACL 2nd Round NACL Quarter Final NACL Semi-Final NACL Final NACL Tournament Tree: Squad: Z Mars: Literally last game of the season, the Cup Final, our faithful WB-L Z. Mars might have just gotten a career ender injury. Bummer as he's a team leader / mentor & was still our best WB-L who I hoped had 2 more seasons in him. Carrillo had the most insnane league season of his career as he didn't play international matches and was fit for every game he scored 47 goals in 18 starts with 3 last minute subs off the bench. Combining with his 10 Cup goals that makes it a 57 goal season, his record. He will get 4 more games this summer for the NACL to increase that tally. Transfers: Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: Head Coach: Nothing new this year. Club Improvements: Stadium done for the new season We are already mostly selling it out and making serious money each home game. For the big matches it did sell out and made even more. Youth Academy: HOYD: Another coaching badge makes my HOYD looks Mighty fine 😉 Youth Intake Preview: I was very excited about this preview as I've been on the hunt for a CD. Note that he rated my GK as "lacking quality"... Youth Intake: I assure you I did not see this one coming. He focused all his efforts and energies into a surprise GK and neglected everyone else. Top 3 Players: Fitzgerald Atkins: I'm speechless that I've generated this talented of a Goalkeeper in Barbados. Unfortunately for me he's almost too good as his initial contract has a non-negotiable 675k release clause, so I have little hope of holding him past his 18th birthday. And how was the CD? Awful personality but at least has some talent? Enough that he'll get mentored in the first team immediately and see if we can fix him up. Excel Tables: He is literally the highest CA calculated player at the club on intake day... Wild how this year not only generated the best CA player but also the worst determination. Everton Poachee GK Appeared! So you're telling me the Everton scouts missed our 120 CA GK and took the other one? Wild. Any other year I'd consider this guy a great generated GK who will probably do some crazy things with 19 eccentricity. Barbados National Team: As I'm doing the update earlier in the year there's not much to report. Just won some easy friendlies and then enter into the NA Nations League A for the first time in the Fall. In a group with Costa Rica & the Dominican Republic, which is honestly a very kind draw. Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Summary Once that intake showed up I couldn't resist getting a quick post out as it is like 3 months of holidaying to do the first round NACL games. I have accomplished a personal goal of producing a "wonderkid" level player out of my Caribbean Academy. I am already preparing myself for him to have a short lived tenure at the club before moving abroad to make his mark in Europe.

Question: Will we consider it valid to accept the lowest placed Lichtenstein team in the 7th tier of Switzerland, even though they aren't near last? Not sure why but in my simulation all four of the Lichtenstein teams did very well with both Ruggell and Triesenberg Getting promoted up to Tier 6, and Triesen and Schaan sitting just outside of the promotion places. Seems tedious to resim till one of these Lichtenstein teams gets dead-last in a full amateur tier this low in Switzerland.

@fries and other Veterans of the Challenge: if you have anything to add / change about what I said about Mentoring & Personalities, now would be a good time to help out all the new Converts to the Youth Only way of FM! Don't want to start them down the wrong path. @v1n1akabozo Glad it helps! Any questions, or you want more detail on the groups don't hesitate to ask. One day I'll finally make longitudinal player analysis to track changes in CA & HA, but for now I'm enjoying the spot comparisons to see what (if any) changes I'm seeing over time of my players. With Carrillo's Barbados retirement I may have started simulating a full Swiss database to take over a Lichtenstein team.... [Don't worry I won't be abandoning Barbados, but I miss the early game a bit] I'm playing on FM23, but they've already released the FM24 mod if anyone else would like pain and suffering:

Since you're referencing my post (and I have time this morning) figured I'd respond. In my view there are 4 points of mentoring, in order of importance: Personality & Media Handling Improvement: Player Trait Passing: Team Cohesion/Groups: Secondary Position Learning: In my understanding, you can mentor any player under 24 through the mentoring groups. The older & more established the player is in the squad, the less likely their hidden personality attributes will change. This is displayed in the mentor window by how much influence the group has on them & they on the group. Thus, for forming a mentoring group: Include 1 Team Leader / Highly Influential Player with a "Good" Personality + Media Handling who is 25+ years old. Include Squad players between 20 - 24 with close to or at the Good Personality who are at least competent in the Mentors position. Include any U20 players in the first team natural at the mentor's position with "Bad" Personalities. For deciding if I'll mentor a young player I really only bother for bad personalities. If it is a good (but not great) personality like Fairly Ambitious or Fairly Professional I usually do not mentor the player unless there are player traits I want them to learn from the group. I tend to split this into positional groups: Strikers, Midfielders, Defenders & GKs. The only hard rule I have is GKs mentor together and not with field players. 4 Points of Mentoring 1) For Personality I (like many in the thread) rank the top 3 hidden attributes as: 1 Professionalism ; 2 Ambition ; & 3 Determination. I only prioritize those three and leave the rest to chance. Why? Because those 3 have been shown to influence development the most. I always like to point to this statistical analysis: Ambition, determination & professionalism - FM Stats! The TLDR: For best results you want your youth players to have 15+ professionalism with Det & Ambition of at least 10. The gains above 10 for the secondary HAs is marginal. Personality and Media Handling Spreadsheet Screenshots Based on what I found online [Hidden Attribute Revealer - Google Sheets], this is the conversion sheet I'm using for Personalities & Media Handlings. Note: there are multiple cases where specific combinations (usually Determination values) will yield different results, but that's not necessary for having a general idea. Table is in spoilers for those who don't want to know. When you combine Personality & Media handling you take the highest min & max values to build the new range: In my current save I'm taking a more "Model Citizen" approach for something different. As I'm in the late-game (20+ seasons) I have the benefit of lots of retired lower league players showing up as coaches, so there are a number of Model Citizens available (even for a minor nation like Barbados). If not Professional/Model Professional is my preference, followed by Resolute/Fairly Professional. Reason you see Balanced coaches is I can't find any good GK or Fitness coaches in the Caribbean so have to resort to poor personalities to have a skilled coach. My Current Senior Staff: Current Reserve & Youth Staff: In this save I've been going for more of a balance between Professionalism & Ambition, with a preference towards Model Citizen coaches when I can find them/keep them even though that is a lower minimum professionalism (15) than Professional (18). The result I've noticed (compared to other saves) is the emergence of Perfectionist personality players. Usually, I end up developing Model Professionals out of my old players, but in this save I seem to have a lower Professionalism combined with higher Ambition. This has the negative of players are more likely to ask for release clauses & get upset when higher reputation leagues come for them, but so far it's worked out okay for me. 2) Player Trait Passing: I'm sure you know all about this as you'll see the notifications pop up. If you are looking to pass on rare / valuable traits that fit your system without negatively impacting player development this is the way to do it. In my save this is happening with my strikers. In this save, I decided to go with "Shoots with Power" for my strikers rather an "Placing Shots" because thematically I like the idea of big strong Pressing Forwards smashing the ball in. From a min/max perspective "Placing shots" is almost certainly better. Carrillo learned this and has passed it to both his Perfectionist mentees. 3) Team Cohesion/Groups: The one thing about the YAC that is nice is you never have issues with team cohesion as you don't have to get new players to fit into the existing squad. It is helpful to bring the next generation into the same groups as their position players they are replacing. 4) Position Learning: Being in the same mentoring group will sometimes increase the positions a player is competent at if they are adaptable enough. I honestly don't really pay attention to this, just make sure that the mentee player is at least partially competent in the natural position of the head mentor. Building Mentor Group: This gives me a good opportunity to go back through my data. A key point to mention here is in the spoilers the values I am showing are the average of the range that the combination of Personality + Media Handling generates. Perfectionist: Carrillo & his Strikers The Road View & Barbados Legend came through at the peak of a Golden Generation, already with his Perfectionist personality. Naturally he was not mentored by anyone and I waited until he was fully a team leader and would get no impact from mentor groups before I formed his, which has consistently had our top 4 strikers in it for at least 5 years now. This is their current CA/HA: Romario Nurse & Ackeel Hoyte: Terence Soares: Spirited & Resolute: Mars & Croney WB/CMs Croney & Mars, came through the same Golden Generation, just an intake earlier in 2034. You can see both showed up with pretty good HA, especially Professionalism. Mars was Spirited & Croney was Fairly Professional. Today