Young player mania is in full swing and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. 

Generally, for the well known ones we are dealing with potentially good players, and the issue is price rather than talent. There are a few exceptions at the higher end where people confuse being good at football with being good on the Football Index. It’s not the same thing. 

But on the whole, the Mbappe’s, the Rashford’s, the Sancho’s, Dembele’s and the Vinicius Juniors have potential to be big players, even if some aren’t obviously performance suitable. At the moment, Vinicius and Dembele are looking the best of that bunch in FI performance suitability terms. 

However, the prices are restrictive. Because people assume those players are going to be global stars already, they are already priced to match. The reward for being right about their future world domination is no longer huge, and the penalty for being wrong if they fail is high. 

Then in the next tier we have some more up and coming players. Pepe, Havertz, Jovic, Werner, Felix, Thorgan Hazard. Apart from Werner, whom I converted to in December at about the £3.50 range because he showed a big improvement, I have been highlighting those as big potential players on the site since very early in the season.  (I was also relatively late to Jovic as I waited until he showed consistency – I got him at £3.96.)

But they are no longer the trades they were. You can do what you like with them because they are quality players. Either take profits now or wait until the Summer when almost all of them have big transfer links to pick up. If you are holding quality you make life easy for yourself.

But here is my main point and the point of this article. Because people buy players who are rising because they are rising, there are good young players that are equally talented with good prospects who are being overlooked.

This week, I spent hours and hours combing through this seasons stats of all players aged 24 and under from the big 5 European leagues to find the most FI suitable candidates. I have rooted out players showing the same levels of ability as the Pepe’s, Havertz, Felix and Thorgan Hazards (ok he is 25). In some cases, they even match some of the £8+ players stat for stat. 

Once we have narrowed down the list, we then need to think about the softer factors like potential transfers and international appearances so we can consider who might be getting lots of attention and the chance of a first team spot at a big club.

There is a lot of information here to go over and I will share the first part today and the second part next week. 

I will also do another article in the coming weeks on more long range, unknown players who have the right sort of stats but need a big club move.