Extra money
Set the salary of your worst player to 99.9 million. Spend all of your funds and the board will begin to complain. Release your player and you will have millions of pounds.
Placing good playersKeep the basic 4-4-2 but with a few adjustments. Move the full-backs wider than they start. There is nothing you can do to make the central midfielders play better in this game, no matter who they are. To make the team more secure, move them back a bit though to protect the defence. If you have some valuable CMs (without a good power stat) sell them and buy a couple of 16-year old South American ones because they play no worse.
Good playersA player that must be purchased no matter who you are is Barcelona's Javier Saviola. With a sell-on clause, you can get his value down to about 1.5 million. Play him on the left wing (although he is a striker). Look for a player in any position with good pace and power stats (the only important stats for a winger) and play him on the right wing. The quality of crossing will not always be great but they will get past their men easily, and Saviola will not run the ball out very often down the left (unlike most wingers).
Upfront, there are a number of quality players available. There are the obvious ones: Batistuta, Trezeguet, Owen, Ronaldo, etc, but watch for pace, power, control and agility in your forwards (shooting does not really matter). A good cheap player with potential if you start a default game is 16 year old Paraguayan F. Torres. He should have 92 on pace and about 50 on shooting. You can get him (without sell-on) for about 140 thousand. Also, if you can afford it, buy Pascal Zuberhuler (Leverkusen) as your goalie.
