Why cant I find players?

I'm not talking about world beaters - although this would be nice - but Im talking about average players too. Iv been managing Aberdeen in the Scottish League and you have to scrap around for players there although there was a few decent players but these needed high wages and anything higher than 5k? Forget it.

After a few seasons in Scotland I moved back to the English Leagues and in particular, Reading. These are in League 1 which is the same division I would usually start my FM career and trying to find even an average players is nigh on impossible. Selecting something like 12 for pace, 12 for crossing brings up about 5 players with the guy worth 1 million being utterly shocking and the cheaper players still wanting astronomical bids (in comparison to their value) from their computer managed teams.

Im not expecting them to have world beating attributes when they'r only worth 50k but I at least expect their basic values for a player who classes himself as a winger (in this example) to be average.

Didnt get into FM09 and didnt buy FM10 but this is the first FM where Iv not had the opportunity to enjoy scouring down a list of players available and finding a few average players within that. Also if you want to forge a team of predominantly British players, ala Martin O Neill / Alex McCleish then you can seemingly forget it.

Am I doing something wrong? Iv selected a large database, having lots of leagues running and didnt give myself Sunday League reputation when starting up. I got Aberdeen in the Europa League twice so this didnt do my reputation any harm.

ive done 14 seasons with aberdeen on a large database with various leagues loaded and never struggled to find suitable players. You must be aiming your sights a bit too high, and your not paying enough attention to the free transfers, for the first 4 years this is the only way to build a good aberdeen squad.

The amount of players you get to search through when you start a game or take over a new club is based on the scouting knowledge of the club and its staff, plus yours. Sack the (normally) useless staff they have and get yourself some decent ones before you can even bother searching for players. Try picking scouts with high reputation and good scouting knowledge (i.e more than one nation) and get as many as possible. Finding just a five players with at least 12 pace/12 crossing with Aberdeen and Reading in L1 seems very weird, as there should be hundreds. Are you sure those were the only filtering options selected?