How do you construct the squad you want?

OK so I want to get the lowdown on how to ship players out and get in the players you really want.

Getting rid of players

If you are a LLM how do you clear out all the dead wood without having to spend money cancelling the contracts. In my experience, whenever I offer mutual termination they refuse, so do you just bite the bullet and buy them out?

Finding players

Forgive me but I find it quite tough finding the players I need as a LLM. Obviously I look mainly for quality loan signings or free transfers, so how do you go about it exactly? I use the player search tool but it is very daunting.

Also, how do you make the final decision... i.e. do you scout them for 3 games etc, or just rely on the stats and take the plunge?

Many thanks.

When I'm managing a LL team I always, always try to get a parent team and loan players off them.

LLM team, offloading players?

Easy, but time consuming.

One year contract, max. I give the players I really want to keepnew contracts 7 months before the end of the year (for obvious reasons)

And then sign loads of Premiership released players and trust their qualities.

Free transfers are what i go for , bit of a wheeler dealer.

This is why I love the LLM world; a great way to see if your managerial skills are as good as you think.

The first thing I do is look for a parent club and try my best to snatch any half-decent player on loan to my team. Along with this, I start going through the free agents list and always keep an eye out for newly released players that would be willing to join the team.

Free transfers is how I usually build my team up for the first few years as those are the hardest years and once after I achieve a level of success that will bring me some money, I buy a player or two at most that I can afford. Once in a while, you get that gem of a player that is 16 and turns out to be an international star and you cash in on them when the big clubs catch on.

As far as getting rid of your deadwood, it all depends on how you look at things. I work with every player I have as my transfer choices are obviously very limited (that's LLM for you). I give every player at least 1 season(the first season in charge) of playing and at the end of that season, I make the decision of who to cut and who to keep. In my cases, mutual termination never works so I transfer list them and play them in the odd game (that does increase the chance of them being sold, at least it has always worked for me) and hope for a sell, regardless of the sale value as getting rid of their salary deficit is more important to me (for the long term).

Basically, loans from parent clubs, and free transfers. If you cannot sell your deadwood, try to get a link with a local team as a partnership and loan them out. The least that will do is lower your wage budget as you'd get the other team to pay a portion of the player's wage and if the player does impress the team he's on loan at, they might even buy him from you.

Making money at LLM is going to be really difficult this time around, especially at Conference level. It seems that SI have made it much more realistic. Getting rich at this level is going to be much more difficult. Add a few years to your normal goals would be my guess.

I had a really successful 6 months in the Conf North and still lost money by Xmas. It may be slightly easier at Conf Nat but I will only be able to find that out next weekend!

The most important thing is therefore to get your signings spot on. The board is also tighter with coaches (the number they say is the number you get in my experience) so improving players to sell them will be difficult as well.

The key will be good loan signings - but I'm only allowed 2 whole season ones, so parent clubs will be less valuable than they used to be - I would previously have taken 4 to keep the costs of my squad down. Generally Wolves and West Brom have a few good players for Conf North level and they are local to my team. Birmingham don't as their reserves won't go to such a low level.

In the 2nd season go for friendlies with all the local clubs you can think of. Its imperative to get the extra income in. I think friendlies will be much more important - they were important anyay, but would seem moreso this time around. It would also appear that the low attendances in the early rounds of the FA Cup have not been addressed, so a good cup run may not be as much of a boost to LLM as it is in real life.