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What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2025 11:59 pm
by Liquefry
What does everyone else do with their recently graduated youth players? Do you, like me, carry a big roster while they get good enough to make your senior team, or sell them young and just buy in mature players that are ready for the first XI?
Probably the best min-max approach, if you dont get attached at all to individual players, is to treat the youth academy purely as an income earner, and using the market to buy top quality older players that are still good but relatively cheap because they only have one or two seasons left at that level, and just rotating through. You would be able to afford quite good players this way since total wages would be low. I tried switching to this with my affiliate for a couple of seasons, and it did make the team a lot more competitive.
The problem is that this makes the team very anonymous - you are rotating through senior players that only stay for a season or two, so you need to have zero sentimental attachment. I found that if I can't recognise the players that the game becomes a bit boring, so I switched back again. Personally I get caught up in the story of the individual players too much for this. I love following their progress from youth pull through to the senior team, carefully training up various skills over time so they eventually become world class players. The problem is that this costs a bunch to get your home grown youths into the senior team - unless they are incredible, and/or you have a weak team, they probably wont be good enough for anything but cup games until they are like 25. So you end up with a youth team, a senior team, and a "getting ready for seniors" bunch of players as well. Kind of the worst of all worlds because you dont sell good players for a profit AND have a big wage bill, so you struggle to make ends meet!
Personally, I think the balance is slightly too much in favour of a TM approach, so I'd love a bigger discount on home-grown wages. But I guess I'm kind of playing a RP version of the game with individual characters that I follow, so I'm happy enough just plodding along mid table without a lot of in-game success. Anyway, what does everyone else do?
Re: What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2025 9:19 am
by GA-James018
I have the same issue as you, where I just hold on to my players in their early twenties until they're good enough for my senior team. It's pretty clearly a suboptimal way of playing, but other methods like selling graduating youths and buying ready-made seniors as you suggested - or another approach is have a whole contingent of similarly aged players come through at once, play them in seniors and put up with temporary poor results for the payoff of an amazing team later - just don't feel right to me.
Without giving too much away, I can say that the admin team has been looking into ways to allow/encourage people to play players in that early 20s "dead" period. To me that seems a fairer solution than just shifting the game balance directly in a way that will upset people who enjoy their current way of playing. We've already made prior changes to that effect, such as the merging of senior and youth academies, that have been controversial enough.
Re: What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2025 11:39 pm
by Cottonball
Yeah I also agree this can be a big challenge.
Perhaps something that could make it easier for the managers who are developing their home grown squads, would be to have better boosts for home grown talents. This could be a percentage increase to a players' training each season they remain at the club, or something similar. Something that makes the players who have been with a club for 5+ or 10+ seasons seriously beneficial compared to the TM approach where you buy 29s and 30s endlessly.
I agree with you that a significant enjoyment of the game comes from the storylines and enjoyment you have with seeing names you recognise.
I am glad to hear of the Admin have been looking at how to allow/encourage players in their 'dead' early 20s to actually play. I think this would be a massively beneficial transformation in the game.
I also think a greater range of ages for the 'world class' players would dramatically improve the game. The FTP prime age for players is roughly 29yo. However, if we look at the top 10 world rankings for test batters and bowlers - only Pant and Rabada are close to this age. Similar for ODI, only Asalanka and Archer.
If we could have more variability in the speed that players grow or the rate they lose their skills, it would make the game much more unpredictable and bring new ages to the world stage of best players.
Re: What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2025 11:57 pm
by Cottonball
Another aspect that could contribute to making 21-25s more usable could be form having a more significant boost (or harm) to the skill summary. It is working okay right now, but really having players drop down 2-3 skill summary levels or boost up would dramatically change the managerial tactics and perhaps make some younger players more playable based on form. You could end up being better placed playing an inform spec spec spec instead of an out of form wc wc wc.
Re: What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2025 3:40 am
by boscorp
I'm actually finding them quite useful for both my clubs. I've recently decided to fully upgrade my academies and become somewhat of a homegrown youth farm. It's very expensive to maintain so my plan is for the first 4 seasons to have my seniors on minimum wages competing in a low division and concentrate on developing my youth squad. As they mature I intend to slowly build up a young competitive senior side in the lower divisions selling of players at around 26 yrs. I'm getting a feeling there are still a good number of clubs giving this age group of players matches.
I don't think treating homegrown players any different to other players would be fair. I think the existing homegrown benefits are generous.
Re: What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2025 11:57 am
by Liquefry
thanks for the replies. Glad to know I'm not alone in struggling with this one! I look forward to whatever tinkering the dev team comes up with, but as I say I guess I've worked out that I'm happy enough just plodding along with a low bank balance.
Re: What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:53 pm
by eagles123
I tend to play younger players in the T20 and give them SOD games wherever possible. And obviously MKMC early rounds is a good opportunity for experience. It can be difficult to make that choice between giving someone game time and going with a full strength X1, but that's the job of the manager!
Re: What to do with 21 year olds
Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 6:04 pm
by Mike778
Liquefry wrote: ↑Fri Oct 10, 2025 11:59 pm
What does everyone else do with their recently graduated youth players? Do you, like me, carry a big roster while they get good enough to make your senior team, or sell them young and just buy in mature players that are ready for the first XI?
Probably the best min-max approach, if you dont get attached at all to individual players, is to treat the youth academy purely as an income earner, and using the market to buy top quality older players that are still good but relatively cheap because they only have one or two seasons left at that level, and just rotating through. You would be able to afford quite good players this way since total wages would be low. I tried switching to this with my affiliate for a couple of seasons, and it did make the team a lot more competitive.
The problem is that this makes the team very anonymous - you are rotating through senior players that only stay for a season or two, so you need to have zero sentimental attachment. I found that if I can't recognise the players that the game becomes a bit boring, so I switched back again. Personally I get caught up in the story of the individual players too much for this. I love following their progress from youth pull through to the senior team, carefully training up various skills over time so they eventually become world class players. The problem is that this costs a bunch to get your home grown youths into the senior team - unless they are incredible, and/or you have a weak team, they probably wont be good enough for anything but cup games until they are like 25. So you end up with a youth team, a senior team, and a "getting ready for seniors" bunch of players as well. Kind of the worst of all worlds because you dont sell good players for a profit AND have a big wage bill, so you struggle to make ends meet!
Personally, I think the balance is slightly too much in favour of a TM approach, so I'd love a bigger discount on home-grown wages. But I guess I'm kind of playing a RP version of the game with individual characters that I follow, so I'm happy enough just plodding along mid table without a lot of in-game success. Anyway, what does everyone else do?
Were you on stumped ? Name seems familiar.
This is my second time on FTP, the first time I quit it was because I was frustrated by the player development model. For me its a massive flaw in the game design. Both the player timeline and the 21 to 24 problem and the way players largely end up with clone builds.
The optimal move unfortunately is probably to drop the academy altogether and just buy 29 year olds but its not the most fun way of playing.
Ideally the player lifecycle would be adjusted so players get more of their training early on and players are closer to their peak early 20s but I dont know if there is appetite for that kind of change.