Fevs and Dave C i agree with your comments, but dave, i know it's up to you to make the decisions and how to motivate, but if your motivation stats are high, the players will react to you differently. e.g if you and alex ferguson 'encourage' a player at half, its likely that ferguson's player will react to it more, right? what i mean is the higher your motivation skills, the more you can get out of your players...right?
Anyways, i think the game makers should introduce a way to spend your wages in the future, maybe FM 08? I've been managing Inter and i got to a stage where i was earning more than the players (65k p/w). Introducing the manager wages was quite a nice touch, maybe it's time to take it another step?