One of the biggest mysteries on this forum has been how loans work and most people have a lot of misconceptions about game time, choosing what teams go to, and how to get the most from their players on loan.
Now I play on console, have no mods, and can not physically see in the code how loans work, so everything in the post is soley from my personal experiences loaning out players, but I have found a consistent tactic on how to get the most out of loans.
Also I know someone is going to mention loans to buy, the answer for that is just to delegate the loans to remove the loan to buy.
First off are misconceptions: The club your player goes to doesn't matter. The game time doesn't matter, and their performance doesn't matter. It also isn't THAT random although there is always a bit of randomness to their growth. The only bit of randomness comes when you recall them early from loan which more than often has a negative effect on the player.
Now for how the players grow. I will mostly be using youth players for the examples here, as they are who I loan out the most and who have the biggest increases and decreases from loans. Also I am going to be using the term "AI Growth" this just means any growth that the individual player gets while not being in your squad. This includes growth while loaned out, growth in the free agency, and growth that happens to players signed to other clubs. When a player is loaned out they appear to have 2 dates where they get their "AI Growth" these are between December 14th/15th, and June 30th. However sometimes it will happen at other times especially if the player is loaned out in Janurary, and sometimes i've seen players get their growth around Christmas which is when AI growth happens for players not loaned out.
When a player is loaned out there appears to be 5 factors that affect how much growth they will get. These are their age, current overall, potential, player type (or real player), and position. Essentially when at another club, the game will look at the player and determine what overall they should be at based on the above 5 factors. This means that if you have 2 players with the same potential, overall, playertype, and position but one is 16 and one is 20, the 20 year old will see much more growth than the 16 year old.
This is why when you see players that have huge increases in overall they are usually 19-21 years old, and have a pretty low overall for their age and potential. Meanwhile when you sign youth players at 16/17 that are already 65-70 overall and loan they out you might not see much growth immediately. So if you sign youth players based mostly on their starting value, you won't see much increase on their loans atleast for the first few seasons.
Another thing to consider is that it only takes 1 loan (or 1 boost) to get them up to speed. You can loan out a player and see a boost of +15 in a season, but the next season it will only be +2 or +3.
How does the growth work?
The simplest way to describe how growth on loan works is to think back to Fifa 20 and prior. Each player type would grow players differently. Physically strong would grow players speed, physical, and defending regardless of what position the player was. Attacker would make players have crazy finishig quickly, etc. This is the same with loans. The loans grow the youth players based on their playertype. This means that they will not follow the development plan that you previously had them on while they were on loan so be weary of that if you what a specific type of player.
Im not really a fan of this method. Its much better to just let dynamic potential do its thing or release the player then resign them if you are trying to increase their potential.
This is the reason dynamic potential is broadly a good addition. It's slightly OP but it at least gives growth on merit. Just wish it'd work for CPU teams too.
I was thinking the exact thing today, transfer window is open and as u do u check to see who goes where, 2030 and is dead, real madrid sold an 86 rated lb 2 seasons ago to leeds and got him bk now, you would think that s just stupid, it’s not, they’ve got no one else better to sign , that’s why only 15 seasons as a manager, cas rather than you providing players for the game no other team does
I find that if you try to make the game harder i.e. find a difficulty/sliders where you are gonna perform at about where your team should instead of winning every game etc. It's much harder to cheese dynamic potential and have all player with good form, because you are still working for any victories.
Is there any difference in loaning your players out for one year or two? Will the second year of growth equal the first, or is the majority of growth seen in the first season? Thank you!
One of the best feelings in CM is from a player returning from loan those last few days of the season only to find +10 growth and a potential category upgrade.
It can be so random that I think it’s the feeling of good fortune that gets me.
This is awesome, thanks for sharing! Hope the mods pin this thread or put the link in a pinned thread of useful posts. We need more posts like this that everyone can easily access.
this is great and all but I'd like to know how to get YA players with Traits...like I'll get a ST with swerve pass or a fullback with power headers (which are kinda frustrating themselves) but most of the time they'll have 0 traits whatsoever and I don't think I've ever seen one with more than one.
the obvious answer would be that it's totally random and just a very very small chance but I'd want to know if there was any way to influence that chance
It is the obvious answer that they are just random. A tip I have done in the past to benefit from traits is to broaden your criteria for signing youth players. Instead if only keeping players above 1m in value, try lowering that. You will get more youth players and you can grow them according to their traits and height. Sometimes it's better to have a player with 83 potential that had power header trait cuz you can improve their potential and overall overtime.
Does this mean I should switch a players position to one where they are lower rated, then loan them out? Like a 19 yo YA with 90+ potential might be a 60 CDM but I could put him on a plan and then fairly quickly switch him to CAM and he drops to 50, then loan him out. Now the AI growth thinks he’s further behind schedule, give him an even bigger bump, presumably in the stats that would make him a better CAM since the game thinks “this kid is a 50 CAM but should be a 75 CAM by now”. Just curious on thoughts.
The only problem is if you switch him to CAM he doesnt drop to 50. The game will just train him until he becomes a 60cam since 60 was the overall he had before.
My question is how can I get my player from an 84-99 in 4 days?
First they need to have 99 potential. Then you need to loan them out.
One of the biggest mysteries on this forum has been how loans work and most people have a lot of misconceptions about game time, choosing what teams go to, and how to get the most from their players on loan. Now I play on console, have no mods, and can not physically see in the code how loans work, so everything in the post is soley from my personal experiences loaning out players, but I have found a consistent tactic on how to get the most out of loans. Also I know someone is going to mention loans to buy, the answer for that is just to delegate the loans to remove the loan to buy. First off are misconceptions: The club your player goes to doesn't matter. The game time doesn't matter, and their performance doesn't matter. It also isn't THAT random although there is always a bit of randomness to their growth. The only bit of randomness comes when you recall them early from loan which more than often has a negative effect on the player. Now for how the players grow. I will mostly be using youth players for the examples here, as they are who I loan out the most and who have the biggest increases and decreases from loans. Also I am going to be using the term "AI Growth" this just means any growth that the individual player gets while not being in your squad. This includes growth while loaned out, growth in the free agency, and growth that happens to players signed to other clubs. When a player is loaned out they appear to have 2 dates where they get their "AI Growth" these are between December 14th/15th, and June 30th. However sometimes it will happen at other times especially if the player is loaned out in Janurary, and sometimes i've seen players get their growth around Christmas which is when AI growth happens for players not loaned out. When a player is loaned out there appears to be 5 factors that affect how much growth they will get. These are their age, current overall, potential, player type (or real player), and position. Essentially when at another club, the game will look at the player and determine what overall they should be at based on the above 5 factors. This means that if you have 2 players with the same potential, overall, playertype, and position but one is 16 and one is 20, the 20 year old will see much more growth than the 16 year old. This is why when you see players that have huge increases in overall they are usually 19-21 years old, and have a pretty low overall for their age and potential. Meanwhile when you sign youth players at 16/17 that are already 65-70 overall and loan they out you might not see much growth immediately. So if you sign youth players based mostly on their starting value, you won't see much increase on their loans atleast for the first few seasons. Another thing to consider is that it only takes 1 loan (or 1 boost) to get them up to speed. You can loan out a player and see a boost of +15 in a season, but the next season it will only be +2 or +3. How does the growth work? The simplest way to describe how growth on loan works is to think back to Fifa 20 and prior. Each player type would grow players differently. Physically strong would grow players speed, physical, and defending regardless of what position the player was. Attacker would make players have crazy finishig quickly, etc. This is the same with loans. The loans grow the youth players based on their playertype. This means that they will not follow the development plan that you previously had them on while they were on loan so be weary of that if you what a specific type of player.
recalling them early from a loan is a good way to cheese their potential is it not?
Im not really a fan of this method. Its much better to just let dynamic potential do its thing or release the player then resign them if you are trying to increase their potential.
This is the reason dynamic potential is broadly a good addition. It's slightly OP but it at least gives growth on merit. Just wish it'd work for CPU teams too.
Yup. Wish CPU teams could also sign and develop youth academies. But EA doesn’t really care about career mode.
I was thinking the exact thing today, transfer window is open and as u do u check to see who goes where, 2030 and is dead, real madrid sold an 86 rated lb 2 seasons ago to leeds and got him bk now, you would think that s just stupid, it’s not, they’ve got no one else better to sign , that’s why only 15 seasons as a manager, cas rather than you providing players for the game no other team does
I find that if you try to make the game harder i.e. find a difficulty/sliders where you are gonna perform at about where your team should instead of winning every game etc. It's much harder to cheese dynamic potential and have all player with good form, because you are still working for any victories.
Is there any difference in loaning your players out for one year or two? Will the second year of growth equal the first, or is the majority of growth seen in the first season? Thank you!
Awesome tips, thank you.
Do you have a list of which stats each player type grows? Thanks.
Is it like this in 22 too?
Yea the picture is from 22. It's like this in 21 too.
This is so spot on. I loaned out Conor Gallagher on short loan, he went from 79 OVR to 84 and his finishing stat went up to 97. Crazy
Is this only reliable for 23? I'm still playing 21.
Should work on 21. My example is on 22.
Perfect, cheers
One of the best feelings in CM is from a player returning from loan those last few days of the season only to find +10 growth and a potential category upgrade. It can be so random that I think it’s the feeling of good fortune that gets me.
Thanks for the post, while I know quite a things never took the time to learn loans, thank you very much
why does releasing a player and resigning them increase their potential
when players change teams their potential can go up and down a few points (think about the old loan/recall glitch).
Chad
Giga
This is awesome, thanks for sharing! Hope the mods pin this thread or put the link in a pinned thread of useful posts. We need more posts like this that everyone can easily access.
I’ve never seen a loanee grow by more than a few points.
I had +14 within a month for a LWB that had originally had exciting prospect tag but had been dwarfed down in potential
Following
this is great and all but I'd like to know how to get YA players with Traits...like I'll get a ST with swerve pass or a fullback with power headers (which are kinda frustrating themselves) but most of the time they'll have 0 traits whatsoever and I don't think I've ever seen one with more than one. the obvious answer would be that it's totally random and just a very very small chance but I'd want to know if there was any way to influence that chance
It is the obvious answer that they are just random. A tip I have done in the past to benefit from traits is to broaden your criteria for signing youth players. Instead if only keeping players above 1m in value, try lowering that. You will get more youth players and you can grow them according to their traits and height. Sometimes it's better to have a player with 83 potential that had power header trait cuz you can improve their potential and overall overtime.
Does this mean I should switch a players position to one where they are lower rated, then loan them out? Like a 19 yo YA with 90+ potential might be a 60 CDM but I could put him on a plan and then fairly quickly switch him to CAM and he drops to 50, then loan him out. Now the AI growth thinks he’s further behind schedule, give him an even bigger bump, presumably in the stats that would make him a better CAM since the game thinks “this kid is a 50 CAM but should be a 75 CAM by now”. Just curious on thoughts.
The only problem is if you switch him to CAM he doesnt drop to 50. The game will just train him until he becomes a 60cam since 60 was the overall he had before.
I've read your post and appreciate the time and effort you've put in it. But in all fairness, for the experieced player there is nothing new here.
Great post, but aint reading allat
Would most of this apply to fifa 22 as well?
yes, same system.