Season 1:
1. Contracts: select the 13 best players and give them all 4-year contracts, sell the rest. This is very important, as their salaries will skyrocket when they need to be renewed.
2. Stadium: No need to improve it just yet. You can start increasing its capacity when you manage to have a full stadium with tickets costing $5. Adjust ticket price to have it as close to full as possible, but not totally full (the idea is to maximise profit via a combination of ticket price * spectators).
3. Sponsors: select the ones with higher value (3 years), their contracts will be cancelled when you get promoted and you'll be able to change to better ones.
4. Training: Keep intensity at a maximum. Focus on the sections of your team with a lower average strength. Keep the 'youth' meter as high as possible, this will give you free youth players at the end of the season. (Cheat: Save the game at the 'end of season'. If you don't get a youth player, reload the saved game and end the season again until you get a youth player
5. Training camps: Train your team as much as possible, in the most expensive camps available or affordable.
6. Formation: Select the formation that gives your team a higher average strength (which you can see in the match schedule).
7. Loans: Never take loans, unless you need a very small amount to buy a player you absolutely must buy (see below how to choose which ones to buy).
8. Matches: Keep the 'struggle' level on green. Increase it to red only when you absolutely must score, closer to the end of the game. Keeping it high for too long will result in cards and injuries.
By doing this you should win every season. From season 2 you can already win the FA cup, and from season 3 the European cup.
Seasons 2, 3 and 4:
1. Contracts: From now on, when you see a cheap (max around $100k), young (up to 27yo) player for sale, buy him and give him a 4-year contract (salary should be below $1000). Do this with as many cheap young players as you see. Keep them as substitutes, their strength will improve over the years with training. This is the cheapest way to renew your roster over the years. On Season 4, when contracts are down to 1 year, hopefully some of your players will offer to renew their contract. Do it.
2. Stadium: Start enlarging it with seats, and cover the seats or imrprove the facilities, state and add lights and scoreboard when you have spare money.
3. Sponsors, training, traning camps, formation: Same strategy.
Bonus tip: Whenever you need to sell a player whose contract is higher than 1 year, first renew his contract for a 1-year contract, than put him up for sale - this will significantly reduce the transfer fee.
Season 5
1. Contracts: At this point, all of your original players' contracts will need to be renewed, and their salaries will skyrocket. If you've bought enough cheap young players, you should simply let the expensive ones go and use the newer ones. If you don't have enough good players, you can keep some of the expensive ones for a little while, or loan a reasonably strong player in the market.
Your team's strength will tipically go down a bit when you renew the players, but it will improve again with training.
Rinse, repeat. By doing this you should win every Season, FA Cup and Euro Cup till the end of time.
