AI spending error

Does anyone else find that the AI dont appear to have the transfer budgets of a human player or choice not to improve their squads? On my save top half teams like villa and everton have only spent around 5M a season even though they have glaring flaws in their squads and would have a much higher budget? i took over everton for an experiment and was given 52M. Is this bug just in my game or is it a proper flaw in the entire transfer engine,

Because for example David Moyes is going to get more money in the first season in the transfer market as a new manager because he has proved his worth

david moyes is scottish, should that answer your question?

Just joking, his buy players stat might be low, could explain it

It's a well-known problem - the AI managers don't buy in enough players or any young ones for the future. You get ManCiteh sweeping up hundreds of top players, and ManU and Liverpool among others hardly ever buying anyone. Hopefully it will be addressed in FM10.

playing in the spl as celtic, i got bored after 3 seasons. i was building an awesome team that was challenging in europe winning the league, domestic cups and had an average age of 22! rangers on the other hand were only buying freeagents, spl players that wernt gr8 and selling all their top players, when i decided to finish my game i added a new manager to c their budget, 51m! really hope this gets fixed in fm10

It's a well-known AI problem. AI player recruitment doesn't follow any sensible strategy and youth policies don't exist.

It's fairly evident in the English Premier League especially; in 2016, Chelsea are still persisting with Lampard (37), Cole (35), Terry (35), Eto'o (35), Essien (33), Lescott (33) and a bunch of other signings. They've only just released Carvalho (38). It's nonsense that these players are still playing 30+ Prem games a season. They wouldn't even embarass Chelsea by asking to play till 37/38 in real life.

Then theres active Youth Policies; that is scouting and signing youth players for the future. The only evidence i've seen of this is in Serie A because the top sides are always going in with Co-Ownership bids for 16 year old kids. I manage to dominate long-term saves by simply actively scouting youth players and developing them.

Hopefully it's fixed in FM10 because FM in the long term isn't a challenge anymore. The intelligence of the human player is suceeding against the AI when it shouldn't really be the case. Theres only a few fundamental aspects to long-term football club success but SI are having difficulties implementing them it seems.

Guys, it is not an AI problem. There is an attribute that actually controls how much a team's manager, assistant manager, board members and all other staff LIKE buying new players vs. not buying anybody. It is called Buying Players. At 20 it will make the decision makers in the club WANT to buy players. Then, depending on your board's financial attributes the club would or would NOT spend the money to do so. The bad thing is that in reality MOST big clubs force onto their decision makers an attitude of Buying Players in the range 15-20, which is not YET fully reflected in FM. In practice, this attribute should change over time based on the reputation of the club where a member of staff works - higher reputation encourages a more "player acquiring" attitude. And yes, this process does not necessarily mean that they want to buy an established player or rather a young player.

So, SI, maybe you'd like to:

(a) make the buying players attribute of managers adjust to reflect the club's stature. Chelsea, Man Utd, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Man City normally WANT new players. So does Barcelona (even if they acquire more new players through youth channels).

(b) add a preference of age - whether the team would target younger or established players. In reality, Milan vs. Arsenal is a clear example of different attitude, right?