Quote Originally Posted by kynan View Post
I suppose it all goes down to how you play the game and the overall quality of the squad that you have.

I'm at level 16 now and have never kept a player from my academy for my first team. I always go in 3 season cycles for my team. In year 1 I will fill the team with high 5 star players who are close to being 6 star. In year two the majoiry of those players will then be mid 5 star players, dropping to 4 star players in year 3. By the start of year 4 I am back to going for high 5's again, selling the 4stars, who are now sometimes down to 3 stars in the process.

You get two players from the academy and the best player is always 4 star. Depending on how fast he trains you can pick him up between 12 and 24 Tokens. Or you could go to the market and bid on a high 5 star player and get him instead. I very rarely find myself in a bidding war that goes over 10 tokens. It does occasionally happen, but more often than not I can pick a 5 star player up for 10 or less.

The second player from the academy is two star. They simply are just not good enough to entertain my squad. The 4 star player would be better than some in my squad due to the cycle system I use, but I just don't think the value is there to sign him up permanently as he would be a back up player who never features. Even at the cheapest option of 12 Tokens I feel I could easily get better value on the market with a high 5 star player.
I tank every 3rd season so the players have a reasonable chance of keeping up with losing quality.
At the moment I have 8 scout 6* players and 2 world class 7* players trained up from the Academy, plus five 2* youths to keep my 'average quality' down for more favourable cup draws.
I don't use the transfer market, well not for the last 6 or 7 seasons anyway.