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One thing Ron mentioned when possible changes to the game were discussed a while back was the problem of maintaining the overall size and age of the player population.

It seems that if a change is made to one area, say more Youth Academy promotions to the main squad, then another change probably has to be made in another area, say reducing the squad size limits.

It starts to get a bit complicated and needs Ron's time, which is still in short supply at the minute.

I think people would be happy with that trade off. Although I doubt there are big downsides for not doing the trade off if time is the issue.

But if Ron has zero time, then I guess it?ll never happen.

I 'm getting the message (squad to small) many times.
I've tried to promoted youhts a lot but they keep refusing
Sometimes under 5 days contract - sometimes more.
This is not working

I'm looking at recent transfers in Germany. Over the last 3 days half of the 10 transfers recorded have been promotions from Youth Academies.

So it clearly is working.

Four of my last five youth promotions have paid off. I don?t know what I?m doing right but it?s what?s keeping my team and my finances alive.

Minor Changes
- More managers able to scout higher rated youths
- Youth Promotion never denied but a max number allowed per season i.e 3 players a season maybe?

Mid-Major Changes
- Ability to actually have a full squad of youths
- A youth league for your players to play and improve against the same teams in your division
- Ability to train your youth players ourselves just like first team squad to help them turn into better first team players when they promote

How long ago is it since the think tank of managers came up with a list of improvements?

About three years, I reckon. Ron did come up with some really good proposals for Youth Academies, which would have gone a long way towards making everyone happy, but that's as far as they got. Maybe one day...

I've set my three scouts all to find youth forwards, in the hope that eventually they'll bring me one with nice even attributes. Their first delivery came yesterday - useless! So I'm sending them out again with exactly the same instructions, to see whether persistence might be the key.

Stripey, you call looking for youths twice with the same instructions persistent?

I'm sure he'll send out his army of scouts again though

Not yet - this is just the beginning.

You're in for the long haul then.

Yup.

Second scouting mission - even worse than the first time as far as looking for evenly balanced stats is concerned. A pity, as one or two looked quite good otherwise.

is there a reason why you look for evenly balanced stats?

I have always just taken the better ones regardless of how balanced the stats are, I think they usually hit roughly their youth rating, i think balanced stats just means FA are more balanced which means nothing I have had youths with lowest FA being like 20 and still hit their 40+ rating.

is this just being picky so that you can sell your youths overpriced? I am just curious

Usually it has to do with the potential improvement of youths - the idea is if you have a 90 12 50 youth, his stats are unlikely to improve a lot over the few seasons he will spend in your academy while a 64 65 61 youth is more likely to gain a few rating points.

If you watch how youths improve over time, you'll realise there is a benefit wrt how far they could improve.

Additionally, as you said, there's a better chance of balanced FAs after promotion, which can also improve your chances of how good they could get.

Even then though, there's no certainty you're going to get a better player but it may improve your chances. That's what I think anyway.

Interested to hear other opinions

Agree with both points above. After carefully analysing things I found that youths improve across all 3 atts generally quite evenly.. therefore a youth with an attitude of 90 and low in other areas is less likely to improve overall.

I've found that the lower of their stats in Mental, Physical and Technical improve at a lower rate than the higher ones, not all evenly. This is why even stats on recruitment is best.