Any tips for a newly promoted team to the Premiership?

I've just won promotion via the play offs to the Premiership and was wondering if anyone might have any good advice or tips for preparing for the forthcoming campaign?

I'm playing as Sheffield United and have been given a transfer budget of £15 million. The finances aren't too clever as they have a bank loan with repayments of £200k per month.

Last season I mainly played an aggresive 433 system but have my doubts as to whether I could get away with that in my first season in the Premiership.

Be prepared for a relegation. Start buying as many good youngsters as you can afford. (mainly those that are already as good as your current team). Dont buy them for your reserve team. You need to invest in your first team and their backups first. You have 15 million available and if you are lucky you might be able to buy 2 wonderkids for that amount.

Sell those players that you dont think are good enough for the premier league. Just make sure you have a backup player for every position. (a youngster with a leading premier league player potential). If you are lucky you will stay in the league and if not your team should be much stronger next year so you can bounce back quickly. (or you might get fired).

This is a good time to improve your training facilities and buy a few additional coaches. Also you should be able to scout the whole world now. Check out the brazilian league for a few cheap and good players.

Be prepared for a relegation. Start buying as many good youngsters as you can afford. (mainly those that are already as good as your current team). Dont buy them for your reserve team. You need to invest in your first team and their backups first. You have 15 million available and if you are lucky you might be able to buy 2 wonderkids for that amount.

Sell those players that you dont think are good enough for the premier league. Just make sure you have a backup player for every position. (a youngster with a leading premier league player potential). If you are lucky you will stay in the league and if not your team should be much stronger next year so you can bounce back quickly. (or you might get fired).

This is a good time to improve your training facilities and buy a few additional coaches. Also you should be able to scout the whole world now. Check out the brazilian league for a few cheap and good players.

You pretty much mentioned everything there. All I would say is don't buy too many players and upset the teams harmony. I find that when you get promoted you have very high team harmony and your team will naturaly play well together than with lots of signing. Basically try and get a mix.

The best thing I could say is to look in your assistants advice - team bit. This will show you the weakest positions in the team and will give you a couple of suggestions as to how to improve.

I would concentrate on a stable defence and one good striker. After season one (08/09) you might be able to get Ignashevich for a reasonable fee and some freebies. Then it depends how much money you have left for a good striker. Lewandowski and Bratu might be available for you.

Also keep in mind that you can take a risk and pretty much double your budget by only signing players in 24 months instalments. You'd have to sell players after being relegated but chances are you won't have this problem because your team is better straight away. Tbf I only took that approach in my second year but then managed to get an amazing team for that year.

Unlike the others I concentrated more on getting a good first XI and only after that I started looking out for great youngsters after leaving 2m of my kitty left for that. It worked well. In my first year in the Prem I finished 7th with Wolves in 09/10 and, much to my own surprise, even spent most of the time in the top 4

edit: ***SPOILERS - player naming ***

my main signings in 09/10 were

- Namouchi (free)

- Wallace (Sunderland) (free)

- Mattock

- Ignashevich

- Lewandowski

- Bratu

- Lima

- Rusol (free)

I'm playing a game with the other side of the city, Sheffield Wednesday. In my first season up, I concentrated on keeping it tight. I made the pitch smaller and got in a couple of good defenders and a fast/tricky winger. A good winger can do wonders for you in FM. Struggled in the first couple of months but grew as the season went on and finished 13th which seemed very unlikely early on. I think my best friend that season was the 'no pressure' team talk.

A good winger can do wonders, pace is key, even if his technical side isn't great I think.

yeah just try and buy about 3-4 players and a few wonder kids.

First season up with Ipswich I got a few amazing loans in and some good youth wonderkids....I hope they develop before the long signings go back.

From memory I got Razvan Rat, Karim Ziani for a fee+future, harry kewell cheaply etc...

but i'd been planning for the Premiership for ages, so Opare, Mascio, Chrisantus and Jordan Spence fitted in straight away

Best thing for you to do is to try and loan youngsters from teams like Arsenal. Perhaps try and loan Merida, Wilshere, Ramsay etc. Also, try and get a rock of a defender, Metzelder is fairly cheap if he's interested. Lastly, check on the transfer list, i found Higuain for £5M on my Lpool save.

When I reached the PL with Dartford I was quite aggressive in the transfer market. I sold anyone who wasn't PL standard and stretched my budgets as far as possible to bring in talented youngsters who were capable of PL football. I put the club £10m in debt, although that was cleared by the end of the season thanks to the TV money.

When I reached the PL with Dartford I was quite aggressive in the transfer market. I sold anyone who wasn't PL standard and stretched my budgets as far as possible to bring in talented youngsters who were capable of PL football. I put the club £10m in debt, although that was cleared by the end of the season thanks to the TV money.

Did this not affect your squad harmony / gelling? I always find that when I buy more than 3 or 4 players in a transfer window my results invariably suffer for a couple of months - I would imagine that being a relegation battling outfit you couldn't afford to go that long without picking up a couple of wins.

Interested to hear your experience with this Dafuge as you're an experienced gamer! I'm on the precipice of promotion from The Championship so will be facing a similar dilemma to the OP's soon.

When I reached the PL with Dartford I was quite aggressive in the transfer market. I sold anyone who wasn't PL standard and stretched my budgets as far as possible to bring in talented youngsters who were capable of PL football. I put the club £10m in debt, although that was cleared by the end of the season thanks to the TV money.

Don’t you find that’s one of the problems with not knowing how your current players will do in the Premiership?

I’ve got £15 million to spend but so far have just brought in four players for next to nothing. I was planning to change formation this season from a 433 to a more solid 4132 but having just aquired Giles Barnes, who looks quite useful on the wing, I’m stuck with how to fit him in.

It seems difficult to get any top, top player to come to the club and then you have an issue with wages as my top earner is only on less than £30k per week.

I’ve forgotten how the star system works but my squad is showing an even split between 2,3 and 4 star players. Will this be good enough?

play 5 accros the middle with a small pitch and suffocate everybody

Yeah i try to find some wonderkids/Talented youngsters.

Also first thing i always do when i win promotion to the Prem is look for a solid goalkeeper, I look for some who's contract might be expiring and if its a big player who wants big wages i always offer him just a 1 year deal and offer him a little bit more than what he his requesting to make him accept the 1 year deal.

Then that way if you get relegated you can offer him a new deal and if he his requesting too much you can release him, Same if you do stay up and maybe his stats have dropped or he as not done the job you was expecting you can release him that way too.

Keepers i usually try and get his Ben Foster from Man Utd his contract his usually nearly ending when i win promotion. Also if you can't get any decent keepers to come i always sign Kieron Westwood from Coventry(can get him for around 2 million) He his a very good keeper and will do a good job for a newly promoted team, Also good enough to be a back up for a mid table Prem team.

Did this not affect your squad harmony / gelling? I always find that when I buy more than 3 or 4 players in a transfer window my results invariably suffer for a couple of months - I would imagine that being a relegation battling outfit you couldn't afford to go that long without picking up a couple of wins.

Interested to hear your experience with this Dafuge as you're an experienced gamer! I'm on the precipice of promotion from The Championship so will be facing a similar dilemma to the OP's soon.

We struggled at first, spending the first half of the season in the relegation zone. Things picked up and we eventually finished 15th. To be honest the old squad I had probably could have done that but doing this set me up much better for the following seasons.

The following season I did the same and we finished 7th, the next season we won it without too many transfers needed.

It was a gamble and things could have gone wrong if we had not stayed up in the first year but gambling on bringing in the best players I could worked out well for me over those three years.

I'm really no expert, but I'm not sure you need to be looking for wonderkids. At least not in your first season. I'd concentrate in getting a lot of solid players cheaply and on loan, especially centre backs, and use the money to buy a goalscorer.

Maybe a striker is the position you should search for a young player with a lot of potential. He needs to have god current ability though. Even if you don't get a young player, a target man would be very useful.

Make sure your goalkeeper is up to scratch. Look to loan from the big 4 if you need an upgrade.

We struggled at first, spending the first half of the season in the relegation zone. Things picked up and we eventually finished 15th. To be honest the old squad I had probably could have done that but doing this set me up much better for the following seasons.

The following season I did the same and we finished 7th, the next season we won it without too many transfers needed.

It was a gamble and things could have gone wrong if we had not stayed up in the first year but gambling on bringing in the best players I could worked out well for me over those three years.

I know that the teams that have yo-yoed between the Premiership and the Championship over the last few years, such as Sunderland and West Brom, Wolves, never really gambled on good players when they came up. That was in order to limit the pain as they expected to go down.

You seemed to do well by being positive. I think you have to be aggressive in order to stay in a new league. It's better to have a really good go at a league than to be negative and end up with 15 points. If you buy correctly, not only will you stay in a league, but you will also have a good chance of becoming a fixture in the top half.

I've just started out my first season in the Prem after bringing AFC Wimbledon up through the leagues, I think its the 2016/17 season. I had £19 mil to spend after some good work in the transfer market. I've still got the original 6,000 seater stadium but there's a new 17,000 being built for the next season. There's quite a lot going out each month due to loans/extremely small stadium and I need to stay up this season for the club to survive.

I decided to gamble, spent £18.5 mil on four very good players; two regen full-backs for each side, Victor Moses and Andy Carroll. I've got three solid young central defenders, a strong midfield, an aging but still good quality Jermaine Beckford with a 19 year old wonderkid and top class championship striker.

I sold everyone I could do without, some for peanuts just to save on wages but my bill is still quite large. We're playing good football but struggling to put the ball in the back of the net. Carroll is chipping in a few goals from set pieces and my wonder kids got 2 in 5 but he's been really poor. I'm finding myself punished but the odd goal here and there, very frustrating!

When i get promoted to the prem as a championship club i tend to focus myself around former premiership players who would be stars in the championship. It all seems a bit plain jane but when i got promoted to the prem as Leeds i decided to get players like Marlon Harewood who have been there and done that and Marlon in particular worked wonders for me. IMO the most important thing is a solid base. Get a good defence and a bit of creativity in midfield and a decent finisher and you should be fine.