Guide: The 5 ways to improve and optimize youth intake in Football Manager

by @guidosteve

Youth intake day in FM. We all look forward to it and are excited about what wonderkid we will get this year…

… only to be left with a bunch of second grade players that’ll never make your team.

In the guide today, we will show you the 5-step method to optimizing youth intake so you’ll get more wonderkids and less players who… well, really shouldn’t be playing football.

The first thing to do is hire a great Head of Youth Development.

This will immediately improve your youth intake and doesn’t really cost that much.

Most people look for the attributes first, but the single most important thing for your Head of Youth Development is to have a positive personality.

So to re-iterate:

Your Head of Youth Development should have a personality that is one of:

· Professional (or model professional)

· Model citizen

· Perfectionist

And why is that?

The reason is very simple. Your Head of Youth Development will sign players with a personality to match his own. Players with these personalities are much better at reaching their potential.

Think about it like this:

Nicklas Bendtner probably has more pure footballing potential than James Milner.

However, Nicklas Bendtner is basically as far from a model professional you can come. On the other hand, James Milner keeps his head down, works hard and has had a pretty good career.

Basically, he is better at training and more focused in games.​

This is extremely important and I will happily sacrifice attribute points (which is coming up next) for a model professional as Head of Youth Development.

In the screenshot, I’ve shown a really good Head of Youth Development. He is professional and has high ratings in all the important attributes.

How to easily find the best Head of Youth Development

Now that you know what to look for, I’ll show you how to easily do it.

First off, go to your staff screen as shown below.

Now what you want to do is to create a custom filter so you can see all the important attributes.

To do so follow the screenshot below, by pressing the 1, 2, 3 sequence.

What you want to do is replicate what is below to the right by adding and removing the appropriate fields.

Click “Judge P” to sort by judging player potential. This will bring up the following view.

As you can see, both Liam Brady and Tony Carr will make very good Head of Youth Development. These are both professional and have 18 in judging player potential.

Of the two, I would go for Tony Carr as he has a higher Youth (working with youngsters) rating.

In addition, both have high attributes in judging player ability which ensures players join at a good level.

The second most important step is optimizing your youth scouting network.

To see what level it as it now go to the facilities screen.

The better your youth recruitment is, the higher the potential of the players will be.

However, this is not in the 1-20 attribute scale that FM normally uses.

So how do you figure out if it can be improved?

Luckily, it’s quite easy.

To do so, go to the board, select make board request, go to networking and see if the improve youth recruitment option is there.

If it is, you can make your recruitment better and if it isn’t, you’re already at the top level.

So, if the option is there, ask the board to improve your youth recruitment.

So now we get high potential youth. The next step is to make sure they are good.

I’ve been guilty of thinking: “I do not care what level my youth intake is at now, I want to know how good they can become”.

And yes, what is important is how good they can become…

… but how quickly they become good is also quite important.

If your youth has potential like Messi but are hopeless when they are brought in to your club it will take years longer to develop them, and there is a very real risk, that they simply never reach their potential.

And that’s exactly why, you should maximize junior coaching.

Luckily, SI has made it easy for us and to check if you can improve it, you do exactly the same as in step 2, when looking for youth recruitment.

The only difference now, is that you go look for the option increase junior coaching budget as shown below.

Now we have all the ingredients that go into determining the type and level of youth intake you will get…

… but without the proper backroom staff and training facilities they will go nowhere.

You want to ensure that your youth develops quickly so you can get them into the first team faster.

To do so, you should have the best possible backroom staff.

We’ve already written a Guide to Backroom Staff, so I’ll encourage you to go read that.

The final thing to help the development of your young players is the youth facilities.

Again, we are lucky as it’s just as easy as in step #2 and step #3 to see if you can improve it.

This time, what we are looking for is the option to improve youth facilities, as shown below.

And that’s it. We’ve now done everything we can to ensure we have the best possible youth setup to carry the team forward.

So, to sum up:

How to have the best possible youth intake in Football Manager

Now you go do it

So, what do you think about our guide to youth intake in FM?

Or maybe you have a question about how to do it.

Either way, leave a comment quick below.

I’ll be around to reply to comments and answer questions.

So, if you have a question or thought, leave a comment right now.