Time to give back: All of my Transfer Strategies / Helpful Info

I have been getting very quick feedback from you guys whenever I post a question / issue so I decided to summarize what I have had experienced so far for other's help and to 'give back' a little.

keep in mind that I always play with my fav team Besiktas JK from Turkish Premier Division, so there could be different strategies for higher end teams, or lower end teams

GENERAL STRATEGY

First season on 2008-2009, I practically don't have too much money to spend, first thing I really do is to make sure I get the best coaching staff with the highest possible ratings for coaching each skill. I just have a feeling no matter what custom training schedule you program, with the better coaches you always get better results in the long run.

Second thing I pay attention to get the best scouts possible, with Judging player ability / potential to at least 18 to begin with (as my club's success grows in about 5 seasons later I am always able to get the best coaches and scouts)

Scouts really help you find good players in early ages, I personally assign them to my league's Under 18 / Under 20 competitions, and specially watch out for players that they come up with as 'definite purchase / quality signature' very very rarely in FM09 I would see whatever the price signature (happened to be only once in 6 seasons, used to be much more common in FM07)

One thing I am not too sure about, is once you start signing these better players than your squad, slowly and slowly your squad potential becomes higher, and later on when scouts find NEW players again, they AGAIN compare the new player with a player in your squad in the similar position, this time since your player is better quality than earlier seasons, the new player is down rated a bit, so instead of saying quality signing, scouts would say good signing, so you really need to have a sense (and luck) to pin point those gems in later seasons.

I had one occasion where one young player in my earlier seasons (worse squad quality) had a scout rating of either decent or good signing, but I ended up signing him up, and he was just 16 years old, and I even make him play in a league game in a very very early age, he ended up being one of the most amazing players, for some reason his attributes just sky rocketted.

so again, Better scouts, better players,

Once in a while as my knowledge for countries increases (thru my scouts) I would do a player search myself to see if I get lucky.

TRANSFERS

Signing good players and keeping them in my club is very hard, Some may remember me from my posts, I was able to sign Igor Akinfeev for free! from Russia after his contract expires I think around 2011 season, and what a boost he had on my team. Now I tested and saw if I put and set an asking price of something ridiculous its much less likely for a big team to make a real offer from the get go (even though they come up as interested clubs on players profile) I usually set at least 60M asking price even though there are no interests for players like Akinfeev at least 80M asking price.

Although some really ambitious players can still get crazy over moving to a bigger club, I try to have long duration of contracts before they get to that stage, and sometimes I would transfer list them by their own request, but depending on the duration they have left on the contracts I would first try to get a very very high transfer offer if they have quite some time on their contracts, but if they have a full 1 year left, I would have to just sell at some decent price.

Its really hard, specially with FM09 even though I 'negogiate the offer' when the big club doesnt follow up the player still BLAMES you as if you rejected the offer and gets upset (IT WASN'T LIKE THIS BACK IN FM07, right?)

feel free to give me some feedbacks on this issue, maybe there are better ways,

I do try to set Minimum Fee release clause when I have a chance to renew their contracts, with a very very very high amount so at least I have that on paper.

TACTICS

I am always winning my domestic cups, including league, but when I am at champions League every season, and when I am specially playing with CLass A teams, I never succeed, because I dont opt to change my tactics, and since I prefer an attacking game on my domestic leagues, maybe that doesn't go well with teams like Arsenal, although recently I am able to score against those teams more and more, I just can't win more than the group stage, I am usually out of the group stages but then I would lose If I am up against a team like Liverpool or Barcelona right away,

Its tough, I just dont like to slide that bar all the way to Defence and make my defence block to stay deep just hoping that they would not score a goal. I may start trying it more often now than before.

We shall see.

I usually use variations of 4-4-2, mostly with defensive mid, or attacking mid, or sometimes when I need to really score a goal I would make 4-3-3 or 3-4-3.

Again as I mentioned I have been winning my league last 7 seasons since the beginning of 2008-2009 season, (without any save cheats at all) and some seasons in my league I only lost 1 or 2 games, and draw 3 games at most with amazing sequences of winning and not conceding a goal sometimes. specially after I bought Sinan Bolat from Belgium Leagues and Igor Akinfeev as my GKs.

Anyways thanks for listening, hope these things can help a little to others.