I had to read the whole thread to ensure that no-one have aforementioned a fact I was going to make but after Aleksandar's superb comparison to girlfriends just made my point sound irrelevant.
But I'll try to bring in my point of view.
When you train your players they'll develop (kind of obvious). But. Their salaries will be re-calculated after each season, so you can exploit their development for free the same season they've popped. That's a huge benefit as it might even be that one couldn't even afford their future salaries. For example my 12 players total wage is right now $ 422k but the future estimation is $ 453k. The gap would be even greater if a) my trainees would be younger and b) I would make them mono-skilled monsters. And yes: you can't get a "cap boost" like that on the first week of the new season. And it's the opposite for those veterans who will have skill drops but their salary will be re-evaluated after the season.
A few different examples and my current trainees:
Kotila
(17081860) was my own draftee and recently was promoted to NT. (One goal achieved.) It's really beneficial to merchandise profits.
Lasicki
(21338412) is my SF-project. If you roam the TL for players ID & OD 10+, you can guess why. If I someday will get bored with his training, I sure hope someone is still then paying those ridiculous multi-million prices.
Thirdly you might get a quick buck just to polish someones skills for a few weeks and sell him with greater margin as people tend to like more all-around players.
Last edited by Jaakki at 8/19/2013 5:19:01 PM