retired_charytine

Some good points mate. :thup:

I, myself used to be a defender and now I'm a striker so it obviously is easily understandable for me.

Gold star now?

retired_marion ramirez

Yes, an excellent idea, I fully support it and would love to see it included in the next FM if at all possible.

I believe whatever can be done to improve the youth system and involve more user input will only help improve the game.

Dav1d

I can't quite make my mind up. I think that the tools are already there to change a youngsters position. I *think* I like the idea but i'm not sure.

I beleive that you can absolutely analyse a player and see if he would be better somewhere else and change him already. I do like the ideas some have posted about telling a youngster to specifically improve one aspect. Like "I think you couuld be a good player for us but I need you to train youur weak foot" etc. A poor example, I know

retired_katiqua4

Yes, Lucio did start out as a centre forward but he must of got moved back because his coach must of thought he had better defensive capabilities. Another example is Alex from Chelsea he used to play striker and i heard somewhere a bit ago he used to be very good too, being the top scorer in his academy for years until he finally got moved back to defence. God ideas those mate and well thought out, im glad you associated the youngsters to Wenger (being an Arsenal fn and all)

Lets just hope these ideas get implemented into future versions of the FM game!

Thanks for your patience, lewis999

retired_bkm41897

I'm glad to see discussion on youth development as I personally love to see youth players break into the first team and I don't think it happens often enough with other teams in the game.

A good idea overall btw. I hope someone takes note of it. I started out as a striker, but I dropped into defence but only because the bigger and older boys I played against up front scared me. A promising career ended by laziness in the end.

I also think the regen youth players should have slightly better attributes to start with. Look at John Bostock, a 15 year old in the Crystal Palace 1st team at Championship level. This would never really happen in FM as they never seem to be good enough. And I'd love to see lower league clubs use youth players a lot more, most of them dont have the cash so they depend on it.

retired_kkmax96

I think the only stumbling block to being able to do it is the "natural" competency for a position. For instance, if I need a left winger, I will never by someone with Accomplished as their competency in that position. it puts me off, I want someone with natural ability to play that position. I tend to find that they don't play as well, as accomplished, rather than natural.

So, to refer back to the youth set up, I believe it is possible to an extent already. I have signed players based on attributes alone. i wanted to develop a target man and I signed a young central defender with good heading and technique. I had him working out intensively on the necessary skills and with the position training selected. he got up to accomplished, but I think it would be nice to be able to go that one extra step with them, so that they can adopt that role, not necessarily named "natural", perhaps, "expert" or something similar

retired_pitaqueen

Youth development needs to be improved.
There is a lack of players that make it to the first team, I got world class facilities at Liverpool but hardly ever produced anything in 20 years! Managed Pompey, got a wonderkid in the 2nd season!

rodrigo

Yes! Great example! :thup:

(That was in the 4-4-2 I just read too! haha! ) </BLOCKQUOTE>

I've got that 4-4-2 which page is that on?

(about the brazilian striker playing in goal)

My_Evo

I've been raising the issue of positional training every year for about 4 years now.
I've no problem at all with players coming through with a specific position, there's nothing wrong with that. It's entirely accurate.

My issue is with the rigidity, and lack of realism, in the assigned "natural" position.
Players have a "Natural" position set in the database, and that is constant and cannot change. You cannot train up a new natural position, the player never loses his existing natural position.

This is all wrong.


Let's take Micah Richards as an obvious example.
He is widely regarded as a player who will naturally move to centre-back (for England and a top club) as he ages, but at the moment he plays full-back (for England) as he hasn't yet learnt all the mental side of the game a top class centre back needs.

Now, that's just not possible within the FM framework. If the researcher sets him as a natural centre-back, the game will largely use him there straight away, ignoring the attributes that should be a little low at first. That evolution into his "natural" position doesn't happen.

So how should it happen?

Well, the whole idea of a set "natural" position would be scrapped. A players attributes would define a natural position, but this would not be specified.
So, a player would instead come through with an "Accomplished" position. If the manager sees him differently and starts training him for some other role, uses him there, then the new position should become the strongest position with the original position diminishing.

Let me illustrate again.
On FM2008 you get a player that is "Natural" at MC, but has attributes that are better for ML/AML.
Let's say he is 20 for MC, 15 for ML, 15 for AML. There's not much you can do about that.
You could be training him at ML or AML, playing him there, do so for 10 years, yet MC will remain his best position!

Instead, several changes should happen.
In terms of training, we should have to set a "Primary Position" in the training screens for every player (we can leave this to the AM if we want). We should also have the option to set a "Secondary" and maybe "Tertiary" position too.

So going back to our MC/ML/AML; he comes through at 16 MC20 ML15 and AML15
We set his primary position as ML, Secondary as AML and have him playing ML with a f/arrow to AML.
It's fair to say that after 6 months to a year, he should be ML20, AML18, MC15.
And as time goes on, he'd move to ML and AML 20 and MC10 or less.

"Natural" should be scrapped. Positions should be flexible and open to variation over a career.

So the scale would be:
Accomplished 20
Practiced 15-19
Competent 10-14
Un-Convincing 6-9
Awkward 3-5
Ineffectual 1-2

These changes will all add a much greater level of realism and flexibility to positions and training.


The AI would need work so the computer teams could make good choices, based on Position-Attribute models, on where a player should be used and trained.
Also, players need to be able to perceive their own attributes, so they can decide what they feel is their natural position, allowing conflict.

retired_ironmaden

Excellent posts, Alurny's graph is class, and I totally agree with the concept it's based on :thup:

Also whole-heartedly agreeing with Dave C's idea about the positions. Natural position should really be scrappes. I don't know if ever a survey like this had been done, but I bet that a huge percentage of players play at a different position at the age of 16-17 than later on.

Just a local example coming to my mind:

Roland Juhász, the defensive marshal for the Hungarian NT plays for Anderlecht now as a DC. He started his carreer in MTK as a striker, and played as a target man in his first half season, due to his height and great heading skills.

Next year he continued as a striker, but then came spring and a dreadful injury crisis: about 6 defenders were out. The manager remembered that Juhász seldom played as a DC in youth squads, so he moved him to the centre-back position. He had a decent run, and the manager saw that he had much more potential as a DC than as a striker.

As a striker he was decent, but nothing really special. Good in the air, quite good movement, OK finishing. The thing his manager saw was that if moved to the backline, his playing intelligence and aerial skills will be as useful as in front, but his speed and technique will be over the average. He had an intense development training for DC and within a year he debuted in the national team as a centre-back. Within 2 years he was far too good for the Hungarian league, so he was sold to Belgian giants Anderlecht, where his defensive skills seem to be getting better by the time.

So thanks to a wise managerial decision he turned into a European-quality DC from an average ST.

I'd like to see this in FM, and to be honest, it could be a major step forward.