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It’s the most wonderful time of the year while the kids practice jelling and all the scouts saying be of good cheer, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.
It looks like we have a pretty good intake. One player can for sure immediately contribute and three more possibly could. Not sure what to do with three goalies when all we need is one.
1. Alan Coates: Though he is Natural at MC and Competent at AMC, I’m excited about training him in DMC so he can be my Andrea Pirlo in the Regista role.
2. Gareth O’Keefe: This guy is going to be an amazing goalie. Hopefully his Ambitious personality won’t see him wanting to leave us quickly.
3. Tommy Watkins and Meilir Pugh: We got two great wingers, one on each side. If Duckett leaves us it’s not too much of a drop to Pugh, who might catch up to Duckie quickly. Watkins will shortly surpass the other AMRs: Andy Hodgson, Andy Robinson, and Ashley Hibbert.
4. Central Defenders: We got one each of footedness, with Kevin Jenkins on the right and Jose Parker on the left. (Is that José or Jo-see? No telling how the English would pronounce it. He doesn’t speak Spanish and is only of English nationality so I’m kind of at a loss.)
5. Speaking of Parker, I’m thankful that I’ve figured out my scouts aren’t really that good. They aren’t impressed with his Potential Ability but his defensive skills are pretty damned good. I’m guessing he’s better than my scouts believe.
6. Only one player with single-digit Natural Fitness and all the highly-rated youths are really good there and in Determination, Teamwork, and Work Rate.
7. Only four players have bad Personalities.
8. Lots of players are starting off with Players Traits. Six players have a total of eight traits.
9. A good spread of secondary nationalities with two being born in the Caribbean and one born in Nigeria.
10. Generally, from top to bottom, a high average of Teamwork and Work Rate scores.
On the flip side, we didn’t get any good DR, DL, STs. I won’t be signing DR Kevin Peters and if I can find a better DL and ST in other teams’ intake then I won’t sign Williams or Hollett either. Luckily our youths are automatically put on 6-week Trial contracts.
One weird thing that I noticed is that some of my players already have a Favoured Team that isn’t Brixton. Ian Barnett favors Bristol City but that’s because he’s from Bristol. That brings up another point; not all the players who were born in England are from London, a pretty cool change that proves our reputation is going up. Another example is Alan Coates, from York, who is a Manchester United supporter. Ungrateful twerp. :-D
I’m gonna hold off putting any of the youths in the Seniors for now. I want them to settle in and kind of hide them, in a fictitious bout of paranoia.
Future superstar Alan Coates, playing as the right midfielder in the Box-To-Box Midfield role pushes down his opposite during a cross in the box and Bill Taylor, the U18s Regista, shows just how cool, calm, and collected he is. Candidate Tommy Watkins shows how it’s done as a Poacher, heading down a clearance and running half the field before sinking his shot. This was all in the first 15’. Despite not being real quality players, the Candidates’ defense does a fine job, keeping the U18s from having an easy time retaining possession, until 80’ when McLeish gets a near-duplicate of Watkins’ goal, including distance covered and juking the GK out of his jock.
As mentioned earlier, I needed some better options as DR, DL, and ST so I went to the Transfers > Youth Intake screen and eyeballed some players from some teams in the lower levels of the English pyramid. I found two for each position plus an unexpected AMC and added them to the Scouting Assignments list. I also scouted some local teams, notably the ones from last year (AFC Croydon, Bromley, Croydon, and Dulwich Hamlet) plus FCD Galicia, Rayners Lane, Farleigh, Worcester Park, Margate, and, just for kicks, Metropolitan Police, London’s finest.
I haven’t been using a Scouting Package for several months but to aid finding some gems for the needed positions I bought the England Youth Package for £9,000 a month. We can afford it now but I’ll probably turn it off in a couple of months.
When the scouting reports coming in for the lads mentioned two paragraphs up page, the news is not good. They are all mediocre at best and don’t want to come to Brixton. I’m just going to have to wait for the scouts to find their own gems.
I decided that it’s ridiculous that we keep getting great youth so I took the drastic step of opening the editor and reducing our Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment. If our next YID again is phenomenal I’ll drop the values even more (below 10). I also promise myself that I won’t approach the board about upgrading until we are confirmed to be gaining promotion to Conference National. If they do it on their own…then so be it.
What took you so long?!
I usually can knock out a monthly update about once a week in real life. Some factors can extend that. For the YID update I have to spend time getting the players card down to a reasonable size. This time around though there was another factor: I found a way to get those horrible player head-shots out of here. Midjourney, an AI image generator. Look at Gareth O’Keefe? What’s better, Before or After?
Before
After
I hope you like the change!