Subject: The League 3 trap

ive bin playing for about 1 year now and opened my junior school in my second season. i think im slightly profitable with it already and have a couple of nice prospect coming though that i know the talent of so im hoping of keeping. :) yet im copping fine with my league 3, winning both my opening games, even with lower adverage marks.

A sign of good tactics ;)

Keep up the good work!

i had a junior school in div 4 with 21 places and manager finances just fine, they are well worth having for the gems that come along now and then.

Gents, I stand corrected. You have changed my opinion!

With the way fan mood drops consistently and supporters leave in 3 maintaining a junior school while trying to promote is not viable for me. I agree if you get some good youngsters you may make money out of it but i have not made any serious money out of junior school in about 4-5 seasons although i have had cpl of magical and 1 unearthly youth pull every single one of them was a hybrid of a player and too old.. an example of this was a keepr who came out at 19 with excellent pace excellent passing good goalkeeping adequate mid average tech even with proof of talent no-one wanted him so in the end i have kept him as a reserve goalkeeper. So in the end after getting seriously pissed off witht the way juniors come out of the school talent wise i decided to close the school i went from near bankruptcy to 600k in the bank within 6 weeks.

Tactics are not only an important way to acheive promotion but also staying up once you do. So keep working on your tactics as they can easily be like having a 12th man or a 5pt+ rating switch. One must also remember that if any team were to get promoted, especially from 4th to 3rd or 3rd to 2nd chances are you will be up agianst much stronger teams with very good tactics so smarter tactics could very well be what keeps you up in the first difficult season.

Truffs
Can you elaborate on the point you made here?
If you have been in div 4 a while and know your costs it can be worth doing. You also have to sell pretty quick once promoted or the value of the player against the skill level of the coaches decrease.

I run a junior school with a magical coach and seem to have a talent for producing a load of limbless clutzes. Has been very disappointing on the whole with my juniors although I finally have c ouple of promising ones due in the next ten weeks.

I am also in III and have been for 15 seasons now. Break even most weeks but considering the drop to try and rebuild.

Okay, the obvious bit:-

If you have been in div 4 a while and know your costs it can be worth doing.

If you know your running costs then you can work to a budget for a junior school.

The next bit is the bit you were asking about but follows on from the first. If your coaches are on a budget of say 20k a week its likely that unless you need to sell trainees to breakeven then your coaches will be weaker than higher divison coaches . Yes?

Well that means that you won`t be able to train your star player as well as someone from a higher division with magicals and 3xoutstanding+. So even though you may have the main skill matchable with the higher division coaches youir general training won`t be so effective. This will slowly make your star talented player look less starry and other will pass him. Now this is a more apparent problem when training midfield and less with say strikers but its still a problem.

Is that clearer?

I'm intrigued at all these guys who have made money out of juniors.You need to subtract the weekly costs, including those for players who turn out to have no sale value, and the coach. I did sell one for 50k, and another for 30k, but that's out of a heck of a lot of juniors. It feels more profitable since I gave it up; I have only 5 home grown players on the books, the best from a squad that was mid-table junior league iii until I gave up, and yet maybe one or two of them will ever be worth playing at league iii level, although even thats in question. I have no idea where these valuable, talented juniors come from, but I never had one.

a lot of it is about luck, but sooner or later you will get players that are worth a lot even with an excellent youth coach. as DJ has said, a lot of the players you pull will be able to slot into your team straight away. back when i was in IV with only a formidable coach i pulled Ant Hebditch who went straight into my first team, and has been my best player for over 10 seasons now.

plus as u21 coach i'd like to encourage more users to have a JS as it means more pulls, and will therefore strengthen the NT in the long run ;)

I also ditched the junior school to help me promote into Div II.

Here's my youth products since starting......found under the heading of statistics on homepage.

Jaye Amies 19 FC INVICTUS DOMNEŞTI 2011-07-03 900 £
Zachary Rhodes 20 DLR Reserves
Graeme Cantrill 20 DLR Reserves
Cecil Cantrell 20 K.P.RYDY 2011-05-18 15 000 £
Gavin Blount 20 FC PZ 600 2011-05-05 150 £
Jake Haffenden 18 wolka83 2011-05-06 2 £
Kevin Petherbridge 18 Holy Spirit FC 2011-04-10 2 400 £
Connor Williams 20 Raullo SLWK 2011-04-10 6 150 £
Lewis Dring 18 marsyase 2011-03-28 30 750 £
Shawn Woodruff 19 fclsd 2011-03-20 225 000 £
Dennis Siddons 19 DLR Reserves
Ray Caswell 18 Crazy Man 2011-03-12 9 000 £
Trevor Williams 19 cf steaua dorobanti 2011-02-04 900 £
Kane Hatt 19 FC Abarth 2011-03-09 6 450 £
Bob Lilley 20 Gunners Ars 2011-01-06 17 550 £
Guy Kelling 18 Fc Szmaciaki Jastrzebie 2010-12-18 6 000 £
Rich Cottingham 20 FCF Rubro Canarinho 2010-11-27 2 £
Alf Briddon 21 KM City 2010-10-16 11 £
Seb Carleton 20 KM City 2010-10-16 11 £
Vaughan Berry 19 KM City 2010-10-16 11 £
Vinay Cummins 21 KS Ropica PL 2010-10-08 2 £
Royston Focker 22 Gks 306 Bełchatów 2010-09-14 225 000 £
Craig Crimp 21 Nadwiślanka Brzeźnica 2010-09-14 4 800 £
Neil Crookes 20 F.C.OLTCHIM RM.VALCEA 2010-08-30 223 800 £
Jim Dennis 21 Polly Styrene United 2010-09-14 313 001 £
Albert Jeffcoate 23 Guzzinho UTD 2010-07-24 2 100 £
Mario Stanbury 24 Ac. Uga 2010-06-05 41 400 £
Shawn Tinker 23 p...a...o...k 2010-06-05 4 200 £
Jeremy Smart 20 chnos F.C. 2010-05-29 545 600 £
Alf Kay 21 pink floyd 2010-05-23 229 000 £
Ermejo Blatch 22 Orange Dragons 2010-04-22 3 017 399 £
Isaac Middlemiss 23 FC Baia Sprie 2010-01-23 219 260 £
Duncan Shone 24 Fc. Black Diamond 2010-01-23 32 250 £
Norman Dumdum 21 Bengals FC 2010-01-16 10 001 £
Billy Skeels 23 Old Boy`s Gorzyce 2010-01-07 1 200 000 £
Howard Rickard 22 KarsıyaKaragumrukSpor 2010-01-02 6 300 £
Howard Antill 25 DLR Reserves
Paul Honeybourne 25 Diamantes Locos 2009-12-26 3 600 £
Kenny Sweeten 25 Cuervos 2009-09-28 18 150 £
Jermaine Root 25 nueva chicago ud 2009-09-14 600 £
Aaron Smelt 25 DLR Reserves
Stan Hackers 26 thebest 2009-06-08 2 625 £
Mahmood Reeman 25 DLR Reserves
Chris Ingle 26 Mar&Men`s 2009-06-06 3 600 £
Leroy Gerry 25 Violet Boys F.C. 2009-05-10 1 869 000 £
Leo Copsey 28 Fc Drol 2009-04-06 36 000 £
Gerry Rew 28 _Enigma_ 2009-04-06 269 400 £
Daniel Mutter 26 DLR Reserves
Mick Sumant 26 DLR Reserves
Ivan Abell 27 Clube Atlético Piracicaba 2011-05-18 477 750 £
John Mohun 26 Chelsea Football Club 2009-11-29 800 000 £
Ellis Rowley 27 Young Boys Power 2008-11-22 1 650 £
Stevie Gilkes 26 Arka Gdynia Team 1 2009-01-14 77 250 £
Charlie Hankin 28 Pequeniños united 2008-08-02 2 400 £
Brendon Jewell 30 F.C Internazionale Milano 2008-06-21 4 £
Del Pearse 27 Alpha Kęty 2008-05-04 300 000 £
Mario Keynes 28 Lks Zwonowice 2008-06-02 14 400 £
Ian Fenwick 36 Wisła Nowe II 2007-11-25 57 600 £

·Sum: 10 328 418 £

My youth product stat:

Sum: 33 219 410 £

However, this might be more useful data:

Transfers income: 72 876 508 £ average 299 904 £ 243 of sales)
Transfers expenses: 26 237 511 £ average 327 969 £ (80 of purchases)
profit/loss: 46 638 997 £ average -28 065 £

Or possibly this, which shows perhaps the cost of investment in a serious youth/training regime:

Account balance: 18 476 722 £

Seems I have lost an awful lot of money somewhere along the way.. But then, I also have a decent amount of money.. Swings and roundabouts..

Stronger strikers... Hmm... How??? I'd need 200k to get a worthwhile one, unless they're 34 or something. I've been growing this team for some time now and they don't seem to have got much better.

By the way, how much ARE these people spending on youth? How good is the coach? What's the weekly budget?

Speaking for myself, I have an Unearthly Youth coach at £34k a week and currently 28 places.

It isn't cheap, but I am convinced the investment more than pays off, certainly when combined with a good main coach/assistant set up and a solid training plan.

Others will doubtless disagree and I am sure they lose less money than me on a weekly basis, but the question perhaps is, do they make more in the longer term?