Question for all: In the past few seasons, we have had a dying/ lack of interest in the U21. Our best draftees are being trained incorrectly or even having their potential wasted. What do you propose to do to solve this and encourage people back to the ways of training for U21?
Interest in U21 (or NT for that matter) is a mindset. It is a national mindset that people have to want to buy into. There are managers that will seek it out for themselves, and try and become involved such as Duke Ward did. There are others, that won't really think about it until its brought to their attention via reaching out to them. There are also those that won't buy into it no matter what.
For each of these guys you have to approach them differently:
Key points to hit on with everyone though are the benefits of
training period. Not even for U21. Just training period. If everyone trains, they become a little more invested in BB. They become a little more invested in their team, and their players. All this will lead to a better retention rate of managers for BB in general. With more players being trained, that will (side effect) help stabilize the transfer market some even.
So we need to re-focus efforts on training players and not brainwashing people into only certain potential players should even be bothered to be trained. Yes it makes no sense training Benchwarmers and announcers if you have better options. Yes there are better options to train for all ages and players. But if someone has a good star or allstar potential player... why are we trying to convince them they need to buy a Perennial Allstar or better and then train that player instead. One of the best players from the S33 draft class PERIOD I saw, was an allstar potential 6'6 guy. So we need to get them training and enjoying the game and what they're doing. If they don't have fun, why would they continue on with the game.
A problem with U21 training currently, is that it can be EXPENSIVE and newer managers are often not able to do that. The newer managers may need to focus on building their stadium out and maximizing their teams profit, before shelling out for level 4, 5, 6,7 trainers to train their trainees. Or than spending 5 mil on a 58 TSP player.
AS the scout for 18 year old big prospects from S33. What I would do is personalize the BB-mail I sent to managers after the generic "you have a u21 possibler guy, blah blah blah" I would personalize it, ask them what they wanted out of their team and how they wanted this guy to fit into their team. I explained the pros and cons and answered questions regarding U21 to them as well if they didn't know what it was. Once I was on the same page as them, then we could work on the builds for their players. I also would give them an idea as to how the other players their player was competing with was looking, so that would have an idea of how their player stacked up, it gave them a sense of achievement and satisfaction. This goes along with my personal belief that improving communication at ALL LEVELS of the U21 process is something that we need to place an emphasis on.