Subject: Talent

Okay, I now have a spreadsheet with all sorts of information about my players. My question for today is:

Most of my players came with the team, so a priori I don't know what their talent is. Is there a rule (even a rough rule) to tell me what a player's talent is, given that I know how many weeks it was between pops?

I've been training pace.

See how many weeks you have between the second and third pop. That is the talent.

Really, no matter what pace they had when I started?

What you ask for, I believe exists, but, myself, I dont know. You may have to try your question on the international newbie forum.

When people talk of talent, they are usually implying the average weeks per pop of a player in the youth academy (something that is not entirely dependent on the player, but also the academy coach). As you point out, this isn't something you can observe with your starting players.

After players graduate the academy, observations of talent are affected by a number of factors:
- player age
- main coach skill
- assistant coaches average skill
- current skill level (higher levels train slower)
- what's being trained (pace is a little slower)

This makes pegging the actual talent difficult. Players with decent talent should evolve in 2-3 weeks at low levels (<6), 4-6 weeks at intermediate levels (7-12). (Maybe a little longer for you given the pace training and likely not a great coaching staff.) Given the limited resources of a starting team, you'll likely have to train some guys that don't have awesome talent - especially if you're doing a pace regime.

Thanks, that gives me enough to go on for now. I did get an unearthly pace coach, so I want to be kicking out the talentless. I just had no idea what the thresholds should be, so this helps a lot. I'm not exactly spending top dollar for prospects, but I don't want to pay salaries to players who aren't going to sell for a decent amount (and/or make my starting XI) in a few seasons' time.

you'll likely have to train some guys that don't have awesome talent

Well, I did manage to pick up a certain Andrzej Cook (-: And the $2 Belgian I bought four weeks ago has already popped twice...overall I'm quite pleased with the talent I have. It's not perfect, but better than I had any right to expect.