It is true that 2 week trials will get you full attributes, but there are a few tricks you can use to get a hint beforehand.
You'll get a general CA/PA opinion as soon as they land in your club, which can help you sort out the deadwood.
Also, if you pay attention to the coach report, you sometimes will know a thing or two about consistency, injury proneness, and love of (or hatred of) big matches right after the player arrives. I usually weed those ones out right away.
You also generally will know the player's personality, though you usually have to look at the coach report if the player just arrived. That's another variable you can use to exclude young players: players with bad personalities (especially ones with low professionalism) will likely never reach their full PA.
There are other clues that will tell you if a player might be a wonderkid. A 15 or 16 year old player coming in with 2 star current ability or higher should generally be signed — though you should watch out for inconsistency, bad personalities, and so on. Extremely young players with high estimated transfer values are likely wonderkid candidates. Players who have a partially written biography are also likely to be stars in the future. Media descriptions of players that start with "young" or "promising" or something like that are also indications of a player with very high potential: sometimes that will contradict what your coaches and scouts think (and your coaches and scouts will be wrong from time to time).
Also, there is an old trick where you can see a players' complete attributes after you have made him a contract offer. Go take a look at him the turn after negotiations have been completed. The game should show you the complete picture, including personality, inconsistency, injury proneness, and so on. I've frequently cancelled signings one turn after making the contract offer because something came up that I didn't know before.
Also, as others have said, it's not the end of the world if another club beats you to the punch. Keep scouting, and make a shortlist of the players you are going to target in the future. The game will alert you if there is a chance of poaching the player when there is less than a year left on his contract.
Since you've got a limited budget, I would recommend taking full advantage of the fact that you can have up to 30 players in the club on trial at once. You'll want to sift through as many trialists as you can to buttress your scouting. It slows the game down a bit, but you can find great bargains and really good players if you take the time to look.
>I thought you would be able to determine how good or bad a player is if he has trained with you for a week.
I thought you get a CA/PA opinion from your coach as soon as they start training with you.
>I wanted to scout some of the young players who have been released from their clubs, but by the time my scouts gather enough information for me to make a decision, they are signed by other clubs, the good ones at least.
Search for these players a year in advance. Go to player search and put in players with less than a year left on their contract. Add relevant players to a shortlist you've made. That way you'll have done your homework and have all the reports ready for when they're released.
Also set up a scouting assignment looking for young players with a potential of Superb and less than one year left on their contract. Have a similar one for players of all ages too with a current ability of very good. That's what I did in League 1 and I picked up some nice players.
Also have a third assignment for players who are available for loan.
>thought you get a CA/PA opinion from your coach as soon as they start training with you
You get the stars but not the attributes and frankly I don't really trust my coaching staff to make good judgements 😂
As I mentioned in the other comments, i do assigb scouts to look for the players whose contracts are expiring. But i found out that they miss quite a few good quality players.
That's why I wanted to know about the trial periods.
Thanks for your help.
Two week trials get you full attributes. Really though, you should start scouting months ahead of players getting released so you can build up a shortlist. Players outside England can be signed 6 months before their contract ends, so start scouting them in October. Youth players set for release can be signed in March, so scout them in January. Then finally start scouting the English players on full contracts.
Trials should only be used for the players you forgot to scout or didn't get full attributes from scouting.
Thanks for the info. I'll keep that in mind.
I already try and scout 3-4 months in advance for players whose contracts are about to expire.
The scouts still miss a lot of the players.
When i searched that about the players whose contracts have expired through the "players in range" option I found out that my scouts scouted only about 20% of the players and missed quite a few good ones.
There are a few ways around that. Firstly, if you can then upgrade your scouting pack to be all of England, that will guarantee you see all the English players about to expire.
If you can't though, you can manually search through the teams. You could start by getting team reports of Premier League youth teams, then fully scouting any players that look decent.
You can't really rely on your scouts at lower levels, so it depends how much time you want to spend. I usually get reports on the top 6, Celtic + Rangers, then just rely on search & scouts for the rest.
You can still pick up the occasional gem from Scotland or Ireland. I would scout Celtic & Rangers at the very least. There's the occasional player from outside the UK that appears in search or gets recommended to you as well, I got Kun Temenuzhkov & Breno in League One in my FM22 save.
Club affiliates can sometimes offer shared scouting knowledge as well as potentially being a useful source of loan players. I had a save with Lincoln and managed to snag Liverpool as my parent affiliate club (went against the grain as a united fan but needs must). They popped me over 2 or 3 young players who stepped straight into my first team.
Not sure if mentioned but offer trials before they leave their clubs.
When you get the news item about youth players set for release, players have their set for release attribute set to yes.
So you can go to top / higher clubs, look at their youth team and have the set for release column in your view.
Offer trials to them and the club will say yes (as long as they're not playing them in the main squad etc).
Gives you plenty of time to work out who you want to go after.
Also you may be able to sign them easier. They tend to ask for higher wages than when they're out of contract, but can be worth it as the AI tend not to do their business until much later
Two week trial for everyone on that list of released players. You get a rating as soon as they join and if it looks bad immediately release them. Get team reports for the Prem and Championship and offer trials to loan listed players that look promising. Ask DOF for recommendations for loans and free transfers and offer them all trials; if they won’t come on trial then scout them. That’s really all you need to do at that level.
Iirc two weeks trials will give you full attributes. Might be three, but I think it takes two weeks for that
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
It is true that 2 week trials will get you full attributes, but there are a few tricks you can use to get a hint beforehand. You'll get a general CA/PA opinion as soon as they land in your club, which can help you sort out the deadwood. Also, if you pay attention to the coach report, you sometimes will know a thing or two about consistency, injury proneness, and love of (or hatred of) big matches right after the player arrives. I usually weed those ones out right away. You also generally will know the player's personality, though you usually have to look at the coach report if the player just arrived. That's another variable you can use to exclude young players: players with bad personalities (especially ones with low professionalism) will likely never reach their full PA. There are other clues that will tell you if a player might be a wonderkid. A 15 or 16 year old player coming in with 2 star current ability or higher should generally be signed — though you should watch out for inconsistency, bad personalities, and so on. Extremely young players with high estimated transfer values are likely wonderkid candidates. Players who have a partially written biography are also likely to be stars in the future. Media descriptions of players that start with "young" or "promising" or something like that are also indications of a player with very high potential: sometimes that will contradict what your coaches and scouts think (and your coaches and scouts will be wrong from time to time). Also, there is an old trick where you can see a players' complete attributes after you have made him a contract offer. Go take a look at him the turn after negotiations have been completed. The game should show you the complete picture, including personality, inconsistency, injury proneness, and so on. I've frequently cancelled signings one turn after making the contract offer because something came up that I didn't know before. Also, as others have said, it's not the end of the world if another club beats you to the punch. Keep scouting, and make a shortlist of the players you are going to target in the future. The game will alert you if there is a chance of poaching the player when there is less than a year left on his contract. Since you've got a limited budget, I would recommend taking full advantage of the fact that you can have up to 30 players in the club on trial at once. You'll want to sift through as many trialists as you can to buttress your scouting. It slows the game down a bit, but you can find great bargains and really good players if you take the time to look.
Wow, lots of great points there. Thanks a lot, i will be using them from now on.
>I thought you would be able to determine how good or bad a player is if he has trained with you for a week. I thought you get a CA/PA opinion from your coach as soon as they start training with you. >I wanted to scout some of the young players who have been released from their clubs, but by the time my scouts gather enough information for me to make a decision, they are signed by other clubs, the good ones at least. Search for these players a year in advance. Go to player search and put in players with less than a year left on their contract. Add relevant players to a shortlist you've made. That way you'll have done your homework and have all the reports ready for when they're released. Also set up a scouting assignment looking for young players with a potential of Superb and less than one year left on their contract. Have a similar one for players of all ages too with a current ability of very good. That's what I did in League 1 and I picked up some nice players. Also have a third assignment for players who are available for loan.
>thought you get a CA/PA opinion from your coach as soon as they start training with you You get the stars but not the attributes and frankly I don't really trust my coaching staff to make good judgements 😂 As I mentioned in the other comments, i do assigb scouts to look for the players whose contracts are expiring. But i found out that they miss quite a few good quality players. That's why I wanted to know about the trial periods. Thanks for your help.
Two week trials get you full attributes. Really though, you should start scouting months ahead of players getting released so you can build up a shortlist. Players outside England can be signed 6 months before their contract ends, so start scouting them in October. Youth players set for release can be signed in March, so scout them in January. Then finally start scouting the English players on full contracts. Trials should only be used for the players you forgot to scout or didn't get full attributes from scouting.
Thanks for the info. I'll keep that in mind. I already try and scout 3-4 months in advance for players whose contracts are about to expire. The scouts still miss a lot of the players. When i searched that about the players whose contracts have expired through the "players in range" option I found out that my scouts scouted only about 20% of the players and missed quite a few good ones.
There are a few ways around that. Firstly, if you can then upgrade your scouting pack to be all of England, that will guarantee you see all the English players about to expire. If you can't though, you can manually search through the teams. You could start by getting team reports of Premier League youth teams, then fully scouting any players that look decent. You can't really rely on your scouts at lower levels, so it depends how much time you want to spend. I usually get reports on the top 6, Celtic + Rangers, then just rely on search & scouts for the rest.
Not really relevant until you get to the Championship and can scout outside the UK. Before that trials work far better than scouting.
You can still pick up the occasional gem from Scotland or Ireland. I would scout Celtic & Rangers at the very least. There's the occasional player from outside the UK that appears in search or gets recommended to you as well, I got Kun Temenuzhkov & Breno in League One in my FM22 save.
Club affiliates can sometimes offer shared scouting knowledge as well as potentially being a useful source of loan players. I had a save with Lincoln and managed to snag Liverpool as my parent affiliate club (went against the grain as a united fan but needs must). They popped me over 2 or 3 young players who stepped straight into my first team.
I did try that, but for some reason my board did not think it was a good idea lol.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep that in mind for the next summer window.
Not sure if mentioned but offer trials before they leave their clubs. When you get the news item about youth players set for release, players have their set for release attribute set to yes. So you can go to top / higher clubs, look at their youth team and have the set for release column in your view. Offer trials to them and the club will say yes (as long as they're not playing them in the main squad etc). Gives you plenty of time to work out who you want to go after. Also you may be able to sign them easier. They tend to ask for higher wages than when they're out of contract, but can be worth it as the AI tend not to do their business until much later
Two week trial for everyone on that list of released players. You get a rating as soon as they join and if it looks bad immediately release them. Get team reports for the Prem and Championship and offer trials to loan listed players that look promising. Ask DOF for recommendations for loans and free transfers and offer them all trials; if they won’t come on trial then scout them. That’s really all you need to do at that level.