retired_shafer.jessica

Thankyou for your opinions.

Although, I would say offering a player a trial who is on a free transfer would be more realistic than scouting him, as where could he be scouted.

Also I'm rather sure that Witte_Huis is wrong, as I would assume trials happen all the time in LLM, especially when players are on such short term contracts i.e less than a year, and with such small squads. Giving players trials is vital as money is so tight.

In fact I would say that it is more realistic to trial a player in the lower leagues before you buy him, although I agree he should have been either scouted or noticed in the news section first. This probably applies until to larger sums of money are being paid in a transfer, 25,0000 or something.

retired_yan

Well, he would have to have been scouted before for you to even know him or be even remotely interested, wouldn't you? My argument is that a player just being available doesn't warrant a trial offer if the club don't know anything else about them. I try to ignore news messages that name players where my scout isn't involved or the player is not on my shortlist.

You are probably right about the number of trials in lower leagues being higher than in the upper leagues though because of the money being thight. Doesn't mean that managers will try to hijack any potential deal they hear about by offering trials though. For a club to consider trialing a player they would in real life at least be somewhat interested, i.e. have a scout report on them (in game terms).

retired_chairman413

I have a friend IRL who got offered a trial at AFC Wimbldon, just by sending a CV to them. He's 26 and never played professionally before. He said it was almost an open day with many possible players trialling. (hes waiting to hear back, but not hopeful)

retired_yan

Sadly players don't offer themselves to clubs in FM by sending in their CV's..

Kodokano

I don't think this is true. I'm a DirtyLeeds fan and we have had scores of players in on trial in recent seasons owing to our financial plight. I know LUFC aren't lower league (we might be soon!) but the parallel is there. When we had the players on trial, the management would often say "we don't know much about him, but he's here for a couple of weeks so we can have a look at him." I really don't think it's realistic to have to scout a player befoer you take him on trial - the trial is the way for the manager himself to scout the player.

As for ignoring news items - I'd sack you for a lack of professionalism if I was your chairman

retired_yan

I don't believe for one second that Leeds or any other lower league club ( ) would invite a player on a trial that they knew absolutely nothing about without even looking at their credentials. If that was the case there would be hundreds if not thousands of aspiring players on trial at the club every week. This checking a potential trialist's credentials is what I emulate by only having my scouts have a look first, before I decide to invite for a trial or not.

Kodokano

Witte, I see where you're coming from, but I think a more realistic equivalent to checking out a player's credentials before taking him on trial is to look at where he's played before, his goal to game ratio, etc. Given how few (none, I think!) of the trialists LUFC had were actually signed I'm sure that they didn't scout them much first.

But hey - I think the most important thing is that we enjoy playing the game in our own way! If you feel you should get a scout report card first (and I agree it doesn't take long) then fine. In fact, I can see it being more helpful: your scouts won't report on a player already at your club (even if only on trial) so scouting a player before you get him on trial adds to your assman's opinion and your opinion. I definitely not going to fall out with you over it