Introduction

At one point or another, we all sign one or more youngsters. Our players are getting old and we need new blood to fill in for them.

So, you scouted and signed a 4 star potential striker, tipped to be the next Wayne Rooney. You will think that in the next couple of years he will develop to his fullest, becoming just like Wayne Rooney, no matter what.

Well, that’s just wrong! You cannot expect to let a youngster rot in the youth team and in a couple of years to reach his potential. It’s not that easy. Some players may not reach their fullest potential, others may take longer to reach it. It all depends of a multitude of factors, all of which are more or less in your control.

The purpose of this small guide is to help you make sure your youngsters reach their potential and do it in the least amount of time possible. This is based on my own experience with the game, it is not a sure win recipe, as I told you is more of a guide, that if you’ll follow, will go a long way with your youth development.

Play time

Arguably the most important thing for a youngster to develop is giving him play time. By that I don’t mean youth or reserve fixtures, I mean actual first team games.

I know, you may have a team full of proven stars, very good players. Why disrupt that with some youngsters? Isn’t it better to loan them to another team until they develop and are good enough? Actually not! Most of the times I would advise against loaning a future star, especially when you load only first divisions.

You should only loan a youngster only when the other team well give him regular first team place (it will say so in their loan offer: first team regular or cover for the first team) and if they have training facilities at least as good as yours.

Most of the times you’ll be better of keeping the youngsters to your club and give them yourself some first team football. You can choose the training schedule and you’ll probably have better training grounds that the teams that are willing to loan him. In my opinion, if a youngster is good enough to play regular first team football even for a lower division, then he will probably be good enough to play some games for your team.

You need to be careful though. Don’t go on and line up all your youngsters in a derby; as a matter of fact don’t do that in a League Cup game against very weak opponent. The best way to go about this is to name them as subs, then at half time or so, if your team had the game in hand introduce one or two youngsters.

You can even put them in the starting line-up against weaker opponents, but no more than 2 or 3 maximum. Give them easier roles at start. If he’s a central defender for example, put him on a limited defender role. You get the idea!

If you are careful enough, your youngsters will get to have some first team football at your club without disrupting your team’s performances. This will go a long way in their development.

Tutoring

This is another important aspect of their development. Some players will just not reach their fullest potential or take too long to reach it without tutoring. This is mainly because of their personality and hidden attributes, which can be changed (for the good) with the help of tutoring.

One of the biggest misconception about tutoring is that you should pair up players with similar personalities. This is true, but only in some cases. Some players have good personalities and some players have bad personalities. Some of the good are of course Professional, Resolute, Determined, while some of the bad are Unsporting, Temperamental, Unambitious.

There’s actually a way to sort Personalities in game from bad to best or vice versa. Go to your team screen and select the Assistant Reports view. There you can see the player’s personalities. Click on the header of the Personality column and it will sort those personalities. You’ll know which the best are and which the worst are by taking as reference the Professional personality (which is a pretty damn good one).

A player with a bad personality will almost never reach his potential. But you can change his personality with tutoring… actually with multiple tutoring! Another misconception about tutoring is that you have to do it only once. Sometimes is enough, but sometimes a player needs tutoring more than once. You can have the same player tutor another for more than once.

Let me give you an example. I bought a youngster with plenty of potential, but he had an Unsporting personality. His development was slow at the beginning. I had another player with Professional personality tutor him 3 times and the youngster personality change every time: first he became a Realist, the second time he became Resolute and then finally he became a Professional. Needless to say his development got better and better, it practically sky rocketed with the 3^rd tutoring.

Be aware though, when considering tutoring, to pair players that play in the same positions. Tutoring will also teach the youngster some of the senior player’s PPM’s. You won’t want the youngster to learn the wrong PPM’s for his position.

Also, if the youngster already has a Professional personality, don’t pair him up with a senior that has a “lesser personality”, let say Light-Hearted. You may risk “downgrading” your youngster. Still, it won’t hurt hooking him up with a senior that has a similar personality, it will speed up his development.

Private chats

This part about Private Chats applies to all of your players, not just youngsters, it is helpful for senior players too.

Talk to them about their Match Performance after a game. Congratulate them if they played well or reprimand them if they played poorly. Be aware of their rating. This requires some fine tuning and a little experience, which is outside the purpose of this guide. Anyway, by talking to them about their performances, you will give them confidence (if they play well) or make them work harder in the next game (if they played poorly). And in the end you will become their favoured personnel, meaning they will give more on the field for you.

Watch the monthly training reports provided by your assistant manager. You will see that in the previous month some of your players did not train very well. Lazy bastards! Go to Private Chat -> Development -> Training Level and reprimand them, tell them to step up their training level. Most of the times this will make them train harder. If they keep at it, train poorly that is, go to Private Chat -> Transfer Status -> Warn Player Transfer List and threaten him you will transfer list his ass if he doesn’t improve his training.

Facilities

Try and improve your Youth and Training facilities to the maximum, especially the Training Facilities. While these do not factor so much in the “will the youngster reach his potential” equation, they will have a big say in the speed of his development.

Training Schedules

As with Facilities, training schedules do not factor so much in the “will the youngster reach his potential” equation, but they will have a big say in the speed of his development.

If you’re new to the game of think it’s too much bother, just leave them as they are pre-defined, SI actually did a decent job with the default training schedules.

If you want more make your own training schedules or download other people’s schedules. How far you go is up to you. You can make a schedule for each player or for each position/role. I find that most of the times a schedule for each position/role is more than enough.

Conclusion

These are the most important things to consider and do to develop your future stars. Hope you enjoyed reading it without pictures (really sorry about the lack of pictures, maybe in a future revision). Keep in mind what I said at the beginning, this is not a recipe, it’s more of a guide.

If you have suggestions on how to improve this guide or think that some things are wrong or left out, please feel free to comment. After all, this is my first venture in the world of guides.

The guide is dedicated to the FM Crowd community!