Talking Points - Youth Academy (Pre-May / Post-May Call-ups)

[SpHSpH]

Many of us know that the players in your youth academy get a big bump to their overall between April 30 and May 1 (the "May Update") ... it is as if all of the growth from a full year is credited at once (rather than 1/12 at the beginning of each month).

I have always tried to hold a player in the YA until the May Update (sometimes I can even hold him for two cycles ... two May Updates) ... and then I do all of my promotions to the senior team during the month of May ... and the following season is the first "real" season that a young player has on my senior squad.

I recently stumbled across a discussion ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/FifaCareers...ay_or_postmay/

... which implies that there may be a good reason to promote a player BEFORE the May Update.

This, figuratively, blew my mind.

Have I been doing it wrong all of these years (and in countless career modes)? Am I trading skill stats for physical stats? Will I be able to eventually recover those physical stats through the regular monthly growth? Now I want to hustle home and check the stats of the youth academy graduates on my senior team ... and see if they all have stinky physical stats.

OS community ... what say you?

[Zalf]

Not "all of these years." It is a bug that surfaced in 15 and never got patched. It was discovered a while after release so I was deep into my usually manager career and this put a damper on it for sure.

[SpHSpH]

Fair enough ... this is only specific to FIFA15 ... but it totally affects the two career modes that I have running right now. One of my modes (Swansea) just passed May 1 for year two (and I was excited about the growth in OVR for a lot of my YA guys ... and just promoted five of them to the senior team following the update). My other mode (Lorient) is in April ... so maybe I should consider experimenting and promoting some of my more promising YA guys *before* they get the May 1 update? (Some of my Lorient YA guys have already had one May 1 update ... so they are already poisoned?)

This has really sent me down the rabbit-hole of FIFA / YA stuff this afternoon.

[Zalf]

Quote: Originally Posted by SpHSpH

Fair enough ... this is only specific to FIFA15 ... but it totally affects the two career modes that I have running right now. One of my modes (Swansea) just passed May 1 for year two (and I was excited about the growth in OVR for a lot of my YA guys ... and just promoted five of them to the senior team following the update). My other mode (Lorient) is in April ... so maybe I should consider experimenting and promoting some of my more promising YA guys *before* they get the May 1 update? (Some of my Lorient YA guys have already had one May 1 update ... so they are already poisoned?) This has really sent me down the rabbit-hole of FIFA / YA stuff this afternoon.

Yeah manager mode was/is my mode. YA guys were/are a huge part of this and I have seasons upon seasons of spreadsheets covering YA. So this really killed '15 manager mode for me because I was far enough in it would have called for starting from scratch or pushing forward with most of my team already physically impaired. And like you said, there isn't a fix there is just a workaround that is basically choosing which bug to take on which players.

[SpHSpH]

I am late to the game with this Pre-May / Post-May discussion ... I had always thought that it was 100% the right idea to wait until after the May 1 update ... I have only recently learned about the stalled physical stats (and that is a real bummer). While I have been reading about this - I saw some comments about "an EA update" ... did any recent EA update do anything about the Post-May physical stagnation?

It seems a bummer that I have to choose between (1) "lousy physical stats (especially speed and stamina) but outstanding technical stats" and (2) "a smaller initial OVR but more uniform and across-the-board growth".

I just passed May in one of my career mode saves ... and promoted five guys after the update ... I was psyched about their sexy OVRs for young players ... but now I am bummed to learn that they make be stuck with their physical stats.

Is there any work-around for this, to re-start their physical growth? Short term loan, to a team in a different country?

Thanks for any help!

[JHedges2]

Great thread as usual. I too, was completely in the dark about all of this.

Sigh.

...and I just THOUGHT the YA was jacked up. Now, evidently, even more than I originally thought...

[Timeetyo]

For the guys who are doing the pre-may update, a few questions?

1 - how much OVR gain are you seeing per season for a PTBS player? I'm just scared taking a 50s OVR player will take forever to be remotely useful.
2 - If you aren't waiting to may - are you promoting as soon as they look good (and are 16)?

[jrich730]

Wow I don't even think I wanna play anymore