Do players really need training?

One aspect of DV is that if you play enough games, LOTS of games, then you get pretty good DV regardless of what the player form is. In the past I've had the odd player who scored DV of several points above AF but I decided to see what would happen if you got some youngsters, point blank refused to train them but gave them 3-4 times the number of games it takes to get "100%" or DV=AF.

It's more an academic test. Sure it's interesting to hoard as much cash as possible and have minimal weekly expenditure but you need low skilled players in order to utilise cheap mentors and after a couple of seasons the players need more matches to develop well.

I took over a team a day before the first league match so pretty much had to buy who I could both for players and mentors. Oh - and I had <1m econ. Not an ideal situation so I grabbed what I could. For the first few games I was struggling with mentors and average age was significantly under 25 which had some impact on DV.  Still the outcome was interesting.

Forget the oldies, it's pretty obvious they weren't going to do well but not really a problem. I need 1 decent player in each position as a mentor but I need 2 age-balancers so no big deal if players drop skill. Playing the youngsters for all the games is the plan and they developed stunningly.

This league had a 10 game season plus a cup which I was knocked out of the first round, total 11 games.

Keeper Slonik was an afterthought - I didn't play him the first 5 games but when I got oldie Burton I could fit him in the team - so he got half a season as a keeper and even managed to miss a game with an injury too.

Mackos got no games but Agrelos got the whole season and managed 19/15 DV/AF

Midfielders Fallon, Tronsjenes & Zapata had the whole season - almost. Tronsjenes missed a game and 30 minutes due to injury. As a 19/5 he was racking up DV slower than the 17/3s anyway but they both managed 16/13 DV/AF. Zapata - spectacular 18 DV from 12 AF.

Forward Maeng possibly should have done better. he had 19 DV til the last game of the season. As a 18/5 I did expect a little more - and the fact his form stayed high didn't really help the experiment.

The annoying thing was that too many of the players had better form than I expected but if you isolate Agrelos getting 19 DV from a "normal" 15 AF, and Fallon/Tronsjenes getting acceptable DV from pretty bad AF you would certainly have to question the merit in training players like that. Zapata showed the true potential - it would be nice to have a similar player with <10 AF next season.

I'd like to give the experiment 1-2 more seasons before building a proper team. First off I'd like to do it right with 16/3s and 17/3s - and also maybe trim the level of the mentors, see if I can find how many bars better they need to be before there is no more benefit.

UPDATE:

The team page form my 2nd season there