Home grown players

[El Pistolero]

It's far more difficult with defenders as their progress slows down rapidly as they age. 5 or 6 seasons is probably about the most you can expect a top defender to stay competitive.
With a striker (who has Free Kick special ability as well), as long as he scores regularly then he will pick up many 'man of the match' awards.
Good cup runs coupled with playing every league game can mean almost 50 games in a season.
Say he gets motm in 15 of them, that's around 30 extra skill points he wouldn't have got otherwise without training and green packs.
This enables a very good forward (ST, AM) to stay ahead of the ageing process, for at least a few seasons longer than a defender.

Oh I didn't think of that
I'll have to keep training him between games to prolong his career.

[El Pistolero]

I was in the middle of posting exactly the same thing when you posted, see my reply above!

So is this kind of player a one off?

I always get decent performances out of fullbacks so maybe I can make mine into a legend. I'll update on his debut then the next game will be a challenge. CL-QF against a team a season above

[El Pistolero]

My first match finished 1-1 against 2nd placed. I edge every stat despite ratings were on his side. Led the match to 75 minutes and he scored in the last 5 minutes. He really threw me off changing to 5-1-2-2 30 minutes before the match.

To make matters worse my RB got a very poor 6.1 rating xD

[khris]

Yee, academy is something I like a lot, I obtained one of my better ST's, Zumalakarregui, and now last season I bought x2 ST's and well, just I'm saving the cones and as I'm tanking I can not say I proved these in good conditions, bu, next season sure, that they will have minutes.

[El Pistolero]

He got a 7.2 rating against tougher opposition so progressing ok so far. Won 1-0.

Are you going for 4-3-3 next season then?

[Sakura]

So far I haven't found use for my youth players, maybe it's because I'm only level 5, but they don't fit into my team ratings wise, I know I could train them, but I don't want to spend tokens to get them, I think that's a really stupid thing as you have already paid for them.

[pcmacdaniel]

So far I haven't found use for my youth players, maybe it's because I'm only level 5, but they don't fit into my team ratings wise, I know I could train them, but I don't want to spend tokens to get them, I think that's a really stupid thing as you have already paid for them.

From my experience, academy players are useful (usually have good form). But I think they're geared towards token buyers. And by token buyers, I mean high end ones, which developers of these free to play games, call whales; those that drop say $100+/month on average or something like that, so such players have access to the greens to train em up.

Even so, a strong argument can be made that nordgens are a better investment than academy players. Haven't purchased enough academy players or nordgens in my t11 playing career to truly test the average effectiveness of nordgens vs. academy players, since I've only acquired two 24 academy players and get like 1 to 1.5 nordgens per season on average. One was rather average, the other has scored roughly 450 career goals for me so far.

[Sakura]

From my experience, academy players are useful (usually have good form). But I think they're geared towards token buyers. And by token buyers, I mean high end ones, which developers of these free to play games, call whales; those that drop say $100+/month on average or something like that, so such players have access to the greens to train em up.

Even so, a strong argument can be made that nordgens are a better investment than academy players. Haven't purchased enough academy players or nordgens in my t11 playing career to truly test the average effectiveness of nordgens vs. academy players, since I've only acquired two 24 academy players and get like 1 to 1.5 nordgens per season on average. One was rather average, the other has scored roughly 450 career goals for me so far.

Yes I prefer to go for the Nordgens, but don't get pulled into bidding wars, my team is fairly young with a few experienced players mixed in, I'm not a high end token buyer per say, but each season so far I have bought the £9.99 deal which gives you 130 Tokens, then I farm for packs as much as possible.

[El Pistolero]

I farm green packs daily and apply them to young, fast trainers. I don't buy coins but I do Tapjoy offers to accumulate them and build my squad around 5-6 stars and if I train them right they stay with me a few seasons. I avoid bidding wars. Max I'll go is around 20.

I thought I'd put my academy to good use and got the 25T player and see how he does.

[nikolgiorgos]

My experience with academy players wasn't so good.
First time I bought a GK, made him (early) 6* player, gave him "one-to-one" sa, first season as my basic GK played very good,
the second season, started with 5-6s so I sold him
Then, I gave another chance in a ST, spend a lot of greens to give F-K sa and make him 6* player, but it was also like throwing my extra sources. He wasn't bad but I could say pretty average (and I was waiting half a season for some descent offer from nego list )


I think I 'll not do it again, unless I'm desperate to find a young player or maybe he already has a useful position and sa.
Till then, I prefer to spend my sources to nordgen.