Subject: »General Questions

the first mistake your making as a new player is having a youth school.

You should be focusing now on learning how training works in this game. When that's done, find a formidable/outstanding head coach that has unearthlies in 2-3 skills you want to train. Then find 3 good assistant coaches with a combined assistant coach salary of maybe 10k euro). Then, find 10 17-18 year old trainees for cheap to start training.

Youth school is an absolute money sink in the short/medium term. Over the really long term I think for most teams it works out as a net profit - but I didn't see the point of starting a youth school for my first three seasons in the game last year. I suppose there's an argument just to have a poor coach in there and hope to find a 16 year old who comes out that age.

It’s not necessarily a mistake, it just depends where your priorities are. You’ll struggle to get 10 16-17yo trainees now for cheap that are worth training. So the other alternative is to build around what you get from your youth school early on so long as you don’t overindulge in youth coach wages or number of placements. Only takes 1 good player and that gets you your money to kickstart your own economy. There’s an element of luck here too must be said. However you’ll probably get a better chance of getting decent talent from your youth school then off the transfer market when you have no income.

Neither way is necessarily right or wrong mind you. Almost all of my trainees have been from my youth school and I opened that when o started both this time and when I first joined up.Just be very limited in places and maybe not go for too high a coach level if you do go down that way as it does take money away from you.

Don't fire your children! :P

You can still make profit of them with a not so strong coach. Just focus on 16yo juniors with at least poor level (which could turn into average in the Thursday training) and little weeks ahead, so that the coach level IS not very important. Specially the first weeks of the season
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YS is a gamble in the start, you can get a good player in the first weeks or you won't get even a decent player in two seasons.. At the beginning you should definitely focus on training a younger group of players until you get some money for YS. For me personally, YS is the most satisfying thing in every manager game, but here I opened it in my 3rd or 4th season.

@stefanos17 exactly! to much money around (55k every week) for season it is over 650k and no one guarantees you that you will get anything for first season or two :) and with that money you can first upgrade you incomes like stadium :)

Really who’s paying 55k euro a week when you start off. At least use realistic figures.

11 places (starting with 6) = 16k (euros would be less)
Get an excellent-formidable coach - that’s 10-15k a week.

So at worst you’re looking at 30-35k a week.

There is a sunk cost for coach recruitment though but it’s a once off.

But yes if you’re unlucky you won’t get anyone useful but if you’re unlucky you won’t get anyone of the transfer market either. A talent 5 from your youth school pays for itself when trying to buy something off the transfer market today.

Really it comes down to what can you afford and can you get reasonable trainees off the transfer list, otherwise the only other place is from the youth school.

Also depends if you care about your nt or not too.
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My two cents: It's true that this has changed in the last few years. The last two times I started here, sponsormoney would cover player salary and starting trainers and rose fast with your fanclub size (+20 a week). This time around I've gotten +4 to fanclub a week and my sponsormoney stagnates around the starting level that doesn't cover weekly expenses at all. Player salaries also seem to be significantly higher.
So it is true that the gamble for the youth school might either cause you to also gamble for bankruptcy (that's what I'm doing right now) or otherwise would lead you to cut too many other corners (not having more than 1 co-trainer, having worse trainees that then don't sell after you trained them 3 seasons, having only 11-14 players leading to injuries, having worse main coach).
The progression has been a lot worse in early game now; finances are very sparse, so maybe it is better to just not go for the youth school, especially for new players that may be uncertain of what youth to keep. If you do have a bad youth coach you will also never know, what players to keep and when to sack, as you don't see the correct youth level btw. It's VERY costly.

Now what I did the first weeks: I changed my main coach to youth coach after thursday and before saturday and had a few spaces in youth school to fish for young players of high level. Just don't forget to put your main coach back before thursday and only get a youth coach after you've gotten a few worthy players. But you'll really have to be strict and fire most of them.

And I agree with stephanos17 it's a bit sad, because finding youth players and seeing them grow over years is certainly one of the big motivations in games like this.
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I mean 15 places in YT and about 15 genereal skill coach with at least 40k wage.. thats just like in my team now, after playing less then 3y now.. better no start with YT if you can not afford that magical coach and at least 15-20 places..

"It’s not necessarily a mistake, it just depends where your priorities are."

My priorities are winning games, building stadium, and promoting to put that stadium to use. That's what I've done.
Half-assing a youth school is an even bigger mistake then opening a youth school early. If you're going to start it early, then you need a brilliant coach, and if you can afford to support that kind of coach, your assistants should get upgraded instead.

Wrong

In every scenario you SHOULD have a youth school at least for weeks 0-5 so you can have a chance to get a top 16... the money risk/potential reward ratio is very favorable

Upgrading assistants in a new/small team is rather pointless. 3x very good or excellent are sufficient when you're not training star material.

Maybe you right about that.. can try to get some 16y in first 5weeks and cancel if dont get one :)

You don't need a youth trainer for that, you can just switch your main or assistant to youth trainer on Friday and you will get a good estimation of your YS players who will enter on Saturday. If you get a appropriate one, you can then decide to sign a youth trainer.

We have very different priorities then. I feel upgrading your stadium too early is a major mistake. You can just increase price of tickets instead.

I also started with a formidable youth and didn’t do me any harm.

I also disagree with assistants, get 3x very good/excellent and you’re set and they cost next to nothing to get. 4 years in and im still only sitting with formidables. Don’t believe they add that much to the overall progression. I don’t doubt they add something but im not sure forking out 120k+ a week more is where my money would go.

That being said we share wanting to win and build as early as possible. As it turns out I’m currently scrapping for if not a podium spot then the actual title this season. So i know what I’m doing.

I’m just saying what trainees are you going to be able to afford off the TL at the start? Probably nothing flash and so if that’s just average you may as well supplement that with your own youth in case you get someone better (and it happens). You don’t need a huge youth coach early on but you do need a reasonable one.

In any case you can play it however you like and that’s what I’d be telling newer players. That’s the fun aspect of the game, coming up with a strategy to get to the top.

great tip!

what would be the difference in progress if let's say a junior pops up every 4.0 weeks with youth coach level 16 compared with another youth coach level 11?