Player Progression Conference

UFFA representative Rob Cooper took some time out to discuss youth development with managers yesterday, offering many interesting insights and tips to make the most of your players' potential. The Cloughite has gathered the highlights of that discussion in an article that makes cruicial reading for any manager working with young players.

On the system of youth development/progression:

So, to start, how things work

As you guys all know players progress over time. But there is a little confusion about exactly what impacts their progression so I wanted to post a quick list of the main factors below :

• Player's Age
• Player's Potential
• How much football they are getting
• The standard of football they are playing
• Average Rating
• Manager's skills
• Player's Ambition
• Player's Professionalism
• Player's Work Rate
• Whether the player is injured
• The player's morale

Now, obviously each of those factors are not equal, some have a bigger effect than others, but generally if you have a professional, hard working young player who is playing regularly, is playing well, and is happy at the club, then they should progress pretty much optimally.

It is worth pointing out here that average rating is more important than the standard of football they are playing - so it is better if they are getting a 7.5 average for the youth team than a 6.0 for the senior team, though of course, a 7.5 for the senior team is better than the equivalent for the youth team! Also, the average rating expectations are different according to age, so a 15 year old player with a 7.0 average will progress better than an 18 year old with the same average.

Another important point is that as many have said, if a player lacks the ambition and professionalism to train well consistently they will likely never reach their potential no matter how well taken care of they are by their manager.

- Rob Cooper

On why you shouldn't worry too much about a small downward change in a player's attributes:

One other thing I meant to mention is that even though the attributes are displayed in the 1-20 range on the screen they are actually stored in the 1-10,000 range behind the scenes to give extra accuracy during progression. Because they are rounded down to be displayed a small change behind the scenes can manifest itself as a fairly big change on the screen.

For example a player with 19 for finishing on the screen may have 9,050 behind the scenes. If they then drop to 8,950 during processing this is only a drop of 1 or 2% however on the screen it is the difference between 18 and 19 and so a red arrow is displayed and it looks like a drop of 5%. Rest assured though that for all processing the 'real' figure is used.

- Rob Cooper

On reaching potential early:

Some players simply start out with an ability that is closer to their potential - so players can burst onto the scene as a first-team quality player let's say, but then not take the step to the next level. But ... these will typically be players who have performed very well early in their career and so progressed quickly.

Players who haven't performed as well will progress more slowly but still have a good chance of reaching their potential eventually - it really depends how much more slowly they progress. The older a player gets the less likely he is to reach his potential, so if a player still has a long way to go by the time he is 22/23 let's say, then it is unlikely he will make it!

- Rob Cooper

On coaching reports:

Coaching reports are triggered if the player has progressed well over the last 3 months (game time) in terms of CA [Current Ability] improvements. For a new signing this might be confusing because the arrows you see are based only on while he has been at the club whereas the total improvement takes into account his progression before he joined as well.

- Rob Cooper

On future changes to youth development:

Ok, so finally, I guess since you are all using this system it makes sense for me to outline how I plan to improve it. The disclaimer here is that this is all planned for the time being and so is inherently a little sketchy and of course may or may not turn out to be feasible and so may or may not turn out to be done. It will all be in the patch notes though as and when it is implemented! So, the plan right now is to make the following changes...

• Prevent negative attribute changes for newly generated youngsters until they have been on the free agent list for at last a certain amount of time, perhaps 3 game months i.e. a week real time
• Improve progression arrows to avoid the dreaded red arrows when only minor attribute changes have been experienced - perhaps by having diagonal arrows for minor changes (such as the ones used on the morale and feedback graphics.)
• Somehow tie player average rating into team average rating so that a player who is the best player in a rubbish team still progresses well - they shouldn't progress as well as the best player in a good team of course but it should at least make a difference
• Tie player average for progression into the average rating for their position, rather than just the average rating for all players, this should iron out any potential problems caused by the ME giving lower average ratings for GKs perhaps than other positions which could have a progression knock-on.

What does everyone think? I am hopeful that these changes could make the system a lot better but of course comments and feedback are always welcome as there may well be things I haven't thought about!

- Rob Cooper