Let Your Babies Go

Another Youth Academy Challenge trick

Let Your Babies Go

Ernest Hemmingway’s advice to writers was to “kill your babies.” In other words, you need to be willing to sacrifice writing you feel in love with for advice that comes from objective editors and onlookers.

The same thing applies to Football Manager, though it might not be quite as graphic.

Look — we all hate it when our favorite young player is poached away by a bigger and better club. But, in the context of the Youth Academy Challenge, this can actually be a good thing. It can open up room for young and untried players, and it can help your club earn enough money to improve its youth setup, training setup, and so on (provided that your owners agree, of course).

I’ll give you an example. I mentioned Kim Song the other day, our best striker:

We’d be in a lot of trouble if it weren’t for Kim Song, and his stats show that:

Sure, these aren’t Messi statistics, but they’re good in comparison to the rest of our team. And, yeah, our team needs some help.

However, the problem with Kim Song is that he simply doesn’t want to play for Rimyongsu anymore:

We’re running into a similar problem with 17-year-old Kim Song-Il, our best defensive midfielder:

Now, I’ve got both of these players on relatively long term contracts. It’s going to be a little while before this turns into a major problem, and I suppose we might be able to turn it around before them.

However, if some other team comes in with a good offer for either one, I’m going to take it.

There’s no reason to hold onto players that simply don’t want to be at your club. Even though you can’t go back and buy them again per the challenge rules, it makes no sense to cave in to every single demand they might have.

Maybe we don’t have any young players as good as these guys — but I doubt it. My gut tells me that we’d be just fine if we lost either one of them. Somebody else would step up, and our gradually improving youth setup will help us out in the long run.

So don’t be upset if your babies leave you. Let them go.