squad size and feeders - 25 max?

Hi all,

A couple of questions:

1. What happens if you have a squad of 25 (max) and want to new/buy/bid/trial somebody else?

2. 25 doesn't seem enough to put out a team in the League, the Cup and a Reserve side. What if you've got injured players too?

3. Some of the 25 are youths who 'are too good for the youth academy', but I'm very happy to use them as subs to gain exp. However, the 25 max rule means that the depth of my squad is badly affected by giving youths a chance. Should I get a Feeder club and cart them off?

4. Do people mainly use Feeder clubs to keep hold of players that they don't want to lose but cannot fit into their main team squad of 25? 

5. How much to Feeder clubs cost (real-money)?

Cheers, Andy.

Thanks Rob. I'm still a little unsure about some things:

For instance, I have a scout of Real Mad, and there are 44 players on it and only 5 are under 22. How can that be if squad max is 25? The scout might have been from wk23 or 24 - if that means that loaned players had been returned?

Also, is 'Dev Academy' another name for the Youth Academy? Or is there a whole 'academy' that I know nothing about (might explain a few things actually!)?

Andy.

Yeah at the end of the season a lot of players come back from on loan, so I'd ignore that particular scout report.

Development Academy is separate from youth and schoolboy ones.

Schoolboy - max 25 under 20yo
Youth - max 25 under 22yo
Development - max 10 under 24yo

If you have 25 players in your first team squad, you can still new/trial players but if you get them and are over 25 the following week then you will get a transfer ban until you go back under 26 players.  Also, your squad understanding will get hammered and affect your next performance, it really isn't worth it.

Feeders are treated two different ways to be honest, one is to hoard players like you say, but some managers do treat it as a separate club, like Rob with Villa.  I try and have a balance between the two.  I do use the feeder to create space at Charlton though, having ten players on loan there so I can keep my squad size at 22.  The most notable being Oxlade-Chamberlain, who would struggle to get a game at Charlton.  Depends how you want to use it really.  Like Rob says though, avoid getting one in England because of the restrictions.

Feeder clubs cost exactly the same as main clubs.

Interesting, thanks guys.

Think I'll go for a dev acad - just got to find 25m or so now!

Do you happen to know if players moan about being too good for the dev acad?

Couldn't tell you mate, decided against one because of the cost.

Hopefully one of the others can tell you.

I had El Shaarawy and De Sciglio who were 99 97 and both thought they were too good.

Sorry, bloody hell, Ollie's been on my phone.

Sorry Wilson family, back to school, confiscated technology issue.

Andy@Schalke wrote:

Interesting, thanks guys.

Think I'll go for a dev acad - just got to find 25m or so now!

Do you happen to know if players moan about being too good for the dev acad?

A trick for building academys is you can build the structure, but you don't need to equip it to actually enroll players into them.

Phil@fulham wrote:

Andy@Schalke wrote:

Interesting, thanks guys.

Think I'll go for a dev acad - just got to find 25m or so now!

Do you happen to know if players moan about being too good for the dev acad?

A trick for building academys is you can build the structure, but you don't need to equip it to actually enroll players into them.

Does anyone have fully equipped academies?  And how effective are they if you do?

Think I'll do what Phil suggests and build the thing and see if the players whinge about being in there.

I assume that players that think they're too good for the Youth Acad may not whinge about being in the Dev Acad?

Also, would an under equipped acad have a bearing on whether players would be happy to be there?

Finally, can I force players to attend, whinging or not? Otherwise, what's the point? I'm not particularly interested in having mediocre players in my Dev acad....

Perhaps PAUL could answer those last 3 points?

will do as soon as game 2 is run

Also, would an under equipped acad have a bearing on whether players would be happy to be there?

Interested to hear what the case is on this one. I may need to stay spending!!

you dont need equipment in your academy to make attendees happy, but you do need it if you want the attendees to be trained up.

Star players are players who have already received some notoriety in real life and/or are playing for a sizeable team in real life already, these players are given a star rating 1 to 9, 1 being a future star or somebody expected to do very well, he will go to your academies, but players rated 2 to 9 wont attend academies, so Casemiro for instance is a 23 year old Brazilian international player and he is rated  atm as star 2 so he wont attend your academy, any academy, attitude 1, he will want first 11 football as a Brazilian international. Draxler is rated as a star 4 so he too wont attend academies even though he is only 22, first team for him too. But Bernd Leno is currently rated a star 1 is 23 so he will attend your academy, German Under 21 probably going to be a star 2 soon though and at that point he will quit the academy.

You cannot force players to attend.

Once a player receives some reasonable level in real life and that has been acknowledged on my database, usually with the owner doing a review, you need to decide if he is worth keeping or not.

Players that wont attend your academy will be happy to move to your feeder club ( feeder club rules apply to these loans ) while you decide whether or not to keep them permanently.

Paul, can a detective do a report on the star ratings of your club?

Rob@Inter wrote:

Paul, can a detective do a report on the star ratings of your club?

not at the moment it only comes out on the international turns.

Thanks Paul.

That all sounds sensible to me.

I wouldn't dream of putting somebody like Casemiro in an academy, or even Draxler - I'd want it for players like Meyer and Embolo.

I suppose any contention would surface if we disagree with your opinion of a players attitude/status.

Nothing new there then...:p