More chapters of Moneyball has been read and more interesting theories have emerged. Targeting high school players is generally considered a bad idea, whereas targeting college players yields better results. Since football(soccer) outside of the US generally doesn't have that distinction how would that transfer to Football Manager and football in general?
The point is that the very young player is more of a gamble as empirical evidence of his quality is less profound. He is also mentally less prepared to the pressure of first team football. The advantage of targeting youth players is that they are usually fairly cheap.
In Football Manager if a player reaches the early twenties without showing his potential he is more often than not written off completely. Football Manager operates with 2 attributes behind the scenes that is a genuine cause for virtual managers to do this. Those two attributes are current ability and potential ability. These traits are hidden from the manager, as they should be, but it seems logical to assume that if a player is not showing signs of ability when he is close to his prime he never will.
To follow Billy Beanes transfer strategy you would mainly have to target players ranging from 19-23 years of age. Those are players who are no longer considered youth players, have had time to show their potential at their clubs and have yet to reach their prime.
That, however, is not all. You need to determine their ability in the game. Physical stats such as Pace and Jumping have often been highly rated in Football Manager. Now is the time to try to look past that. In a prior article I did some research on the prominent attributes of world beaters, and those are good traits to look for. However, I'm suggesting not using the player attributes as the first metric when considering whether or not you are going to sign a player.
Look at the players performance in the past. How it is developing. And how the player is contributing to the overall team performance.
At the start of the game this is nearly impossible and that's when you probably have to focus mainly on the players attributes. Try to look past the numbers though. Personality should play a huge part. As should a players prefeered moves if he has any.
Right. This is just a bunch of ramblings right now. And honestly I don't really know what you should primarily look for. I'm still investigation and so are a lot of other people. Allow me to suggest looking at the Soccer Analysts blog which is frankly pretty awesome!
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