Subject: On buying trainees...

Having procured a bit of cash I'm looking for a couple of new striker trainees at about 100k each. Since it's a large wad of cash (for me, anyway) I want to try to avoid "slow-learners", but players with proven talent (at that sort of level) are pretty rare.

So, what can I do to reduce the risks of buying the terminally talentless?

Fairly obviously I should be wary of players who seem to have been transferred every 8 weeks, and player statistics give a bit of a clue (subject to form, tactics etc.), but is there anything else cunning to look out for?

...or should I just hang on and be willing to pay through the nose for proven talents?

Keep an eye on the junior threads where people post their new pulls and be willing to message managers to ask about talent. Be patient and you'll find a talented bargain soon enough.

A good way (that Phil uses) is to try and look at for fresh pulls without the talent advertised and try and work out if they can be talented...

To do this, you will need to take their age in to consideration, how many age updates they have gone through to figure out roughly how many weeks they would have been in the school...then, if you add up all 8 skills in numbers and divide by 8 the total should fit in a certain bracket.

Formidable's have an average skill of around 4-4.5.

outstanding: 4.5-5
Incredible: 5-5.5
brilliant: 5.5-6

Roughly, based on some data i analysed.

You cannot guarantee they are talented, but they probably will be to be promoted at those levels.

You probably won't get much of a striker trainee for £100k though i'm afraid.

Great advise on potential trainees, thank you for that information.

On the cash side - for £100k I would expect a future world star!.

100k to me would be an absolute fortune to spend on just 1 single player.

I long for the halcyon days when I can think about spending 100k on an 'average' trainee.

I've had a play with the "Phil method" which seems a good plan.

To save on doing maths I nobbled the GK settings in Assistant to have the 8 skills set to 12 or 13% each. So converting your figures (I think)...

Formidable 23.5-26.5%
Outstanding 26.5-29.4%
Incredible 29.4-32.3%
Brilliant 32.3-35.3%

Obviously, they actually get rounded to the nearest whole %, but it does (in my mind) make it easier.
Note however, the downside that the Assistant now claims that my Centre forward should be a Keeper.

Just a passing thought.

Nice way of adding up your own players i guess! ;o) or am i confused...?

But you can use it on players on the transfer list. Click on the player, go to Assistant and they're at the bottom... Or is it me who is confused??

Nope, it's me. As a newbie myself, you've just shown me something i didn't know!

Now i see that's a fantastic idea! Nice one! :o)
(edited)

Cool. It might be a good idea to double check my numbers the first few times, but I think they're right. (also, keep midfield correction off - I've no idea what that does...)

ok hands up who didn't realise that bit about using Assistant to score players on the transfer list!

never realised you could do that. cheers. nice one!

Unfortunately, I'm a programmer. Show me a button and I'm morbidly compelled to click on it.
It's a bit sad really...

Keeps the ladies happy though ;-)