Just not to misunderstand things here ...
we have two cases
scenario 1 : (which I think it was the first question of the thread)
- I bought two players for the same position.
One is young (a nordgen or an academy 5* player from another team) and the other one from the market, 26-27 y.o., with many games in his stats .
Has any of those two some disadvantage or advantage ?
- No (my personal experience always).
- Ok, I 'm in the market now and I can see a lot of players, young and old ones.
Should I go for the young ones only (as i have the money to buy then and they 'll grow faster in q than the olders) or it's good to buy also some older players to make a mixed age team ?
It doesn't make any difference. If some of them will perform good or bad, it depends from their "talent", internal programming, chemistry.
I had a couple of times a team (11th squad) full of nordgen and it did it just fine.
What can make a difference, is to keep from previous season some older players (but doesn't need to be to old, 21-22 y.o., playing for 3 seasons in the team it's ok) so not to build from the scratch.
With that way, the newcomers will find a more "steady" environment to be a part of that.
- If we buy 11 new young players, it may needs some time to find the chemistry of the team and adjust their skills (as the young ones have almost equal skills in the 3 categories).
Set more defensive drills (or skill points from the old version) to our defenders and some attacking skills to our attackers.
Also we must find which is maybe their favorite position or if they have the "talent" for some actions (like F-K, C-K, penalties).
So they need more training and maybe some extra friendlies but for sure they 'll give back later, with their extra gaining than the older.
The second scenario
it's what mac is saying.
The same player if performs better when he 'll become older.
I don't know. Of course a player by the seasons is changing (his stats from the first stats he had).
Also we know how to "use" him better.
But usually we sell the players who aren't good or special performers, maybe the next season (because they 're loosing 1*) and keep only few of them so I can't say if we have many cases to study.
For example mac is talking about his player Fernando Vercosa (lol) but how many others like him he has in his team ?
Those players are gems .