Building a conveyor team

Building a conveyor team is a very natural thing to do - it's almost a surprise there is a name for it. The general idea is players come into the team, stay there their whole career and as one player quits, or gets sold at a designated age, you buy a new youth player to replace him.

Example you have the following 5 defenders aged 32, 28, 25, 21, 18.

You can see there are alternating 3/4 year gaps between the players. In 2 seasons you would have defenders aged 34, 30, 27, 23, 20. Round about this time you may want to sell the 34yo defender (if he will go) and buy in a 16yo replacement so your defenders are now 30, 27, 23, 20, 16.

You would do a similar thing with midfield, forwards and keepers adjusting the age so you always have the correct number of players in the team for the formations you play.

Conveyor Pros & Cons

The big advantage of a conveyor is its consistency. The team is always around a similar strength year in year out. Conveyor also fit in nicely with any average age issues and always have suitable mentors for the key players.

The disadvantage is that your team is never all at its peak and in the above example you would typically  be playing a 3 or 4 man defence. With 4 men you have one of your weaker defenders in the team every match and the average defensive skill isn't high.