Asunto: u21 squad

I've done a quick reshuffle of the u21 squad, using player values as a guide, and considering ages and potential. It is NOT a final draft for the season as I haven't taken a close look at the managers of the players to check if they're doing proper training.

If you have a youngster that you think should be in the squad, let me know.

For now, we have:
21 y/o - nine
20 y/o - eleven
19 y/o - nine
18 y/o - eleven

If those 18 year olds are trained well, we could have a useful squad in three seasons, especially if some 17 year olds are added to the mix. In the meantime, we have a VERY weak squad, the weakest I've seen in all my seasons in charge. As I wrote in my election post, I'm trying to approach this situation with a view to build for the future, so results are not going to be pretty.

Feel free to post thoughts about anything to do with the u21's: the squad, players, strategy, training etc. Let's see if we can rebuild this side to something even moderately decent.

If memory serves me correctly...At the moment it is just me, yourself, Theunis and Jackzack that is involved in training players. This makes it very difficult. Especially if you have a decent young defender, midfielder and striker to train. And you don't want to sell because you sometimes do not have the assurity that they will get trained when sold. We need a bigger number of truly active managers that understand the importance of training youngsters and opening a youth school. That is the only thing that will help in my opinion.
(editado)

Yes, that is exactly what we need. Witbank was also training (still is? not sure) and we've got a new manager in the Premiership that will hopefully join in.

With what we've got, the best I can suggest is that we each focus on one department.
Theunis is training strikers, as he has done since before I started playing Sokker.
I was training defenders but am now working on mid skills because of Zulu. I'll get back to defenders at some point.
Witbank was training goalkeeper for a bit.
You have trained a variety of things, so perhaps mid or def would fill the gap.

That's one strategy that we could take. Something I have considered doing soon is for me to take very young players, a whole lot of them, and just train pace until they max it before selling them on. You run the risk that the player doesn't get trained afterwards, but I think it's a small risk as a fast player without skills isn't much use. The reason for training pace is that tests have shown that pace should be trained first of all skills if you want to maximise effectiveness.

Also, while selling players that end up in bots or just not trained is a problem, it doesn't help to hold a player that doesn't get trained every week. To become good enough for the senior squad, players need to be trained every single week, for at least a full match.

Anyway, not quite certain what to do yet. I myself have too many old trainees in my squad right now and am looking to replace them with youngsters from my school. I want to have 5 to train that are young. The older ones that don't look likely to get into the NT will be on the transfer list as I find replacements to train.

Right, more changes have been made to the squad.
I got rid of a few more older players that are on the fringes of the first team. They don't offer enough to warrant taking up a place that can go to a youngster. Hopefully the managers of the younger players will take this incentive to train their players.

21 y/o - four (!)
20 y/o - eleven
19 y/o - nine
18 y/o - fifteen
17 y/o - one
(editado)

Yes, StoneCold would like to help but do not run a youth acadamy at the moment as trying to avoid relegation was my main aim this season but if there are any way that I can assist let me know.

Cheers
StoneCold

As the season has progressed, I've added young players to the squad as they've come out of junior schools. I've also tried playing young teams in our u21 matches to encourage managers to train them.

Current breakdown by age:
21 * 4
20 * 11
19 * 9
18 * 13
17 * 3

btw let me know if there any young strikers coming through the ranks.
looking next season to replace one or 2 older guys.
but only next season