View Only

What does this option do apart from being able to view leagues without applying for jobs? Am I missing something but I just don't get it.

you can view the leagues without them taking space for your game

I think it loads all the players from that league. So you then get regens from those nations. For me, it gives me more places to look for new talent. I always load Argentina and Brazil as view only. Just to get the players from the leauge and the regens lol.

From the FM handbook

Some Football Manager™ users like to have a larger game world. The Mode selection option allows them to do this without necessarily straining their computer as much. By setting a nation to ‘View-Only’ the leagues from that country will be loaded into your saved game but you will not be able to manage there or interact with it on the same full level as a ‘Playable’ country. However, it will be present and will generate scores as if it were a standard playable league.

http://www.sega.com/fm11/manual/41

Have a read through this thread.

So with my database I have a large custom with all players from major division clubs in Europe. Having this kind of database loaded is better than having view only leagues? I would imagine I'd get more players from that said nation, from view only but a wider range of players from the database I have selected. Surely having a larger database with more players is better than having view only, for processing speeds.