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Yup! They're definitely permitted. I posted my full climb from VNN with Blyth in FM21(and the first post mentions they're allowed since you'll be an EFL team soon, hopefully)

I am cackling. My youth intake just came in. I have an actual elite talent who is going right into the first team, but this is my favorite player.

These are some of my favorite times to take a national job, to try to see who develops quickly and/or who outplays their attributes.

Bolton - January 2028 Had a bit of a rough middle of the fall her, but we seem to be getting back to it, and the losses to Spurs/United/Arsenal/Chelsea/Liverpool aren't bad losses! It's pretty tight in the middle! We should be fine to stay up again, the question is how high we can fly.

Bolton - Summer Transfer Window 2027 With safety secure, we went a bit crazy this summer to hopefully take another big step up in the Premier League. First, a few notes on the outs. Lacko and Henrique had release clauses triggered (for profits of 11M and 23.5M respectively), so they had to be replaced. Koroma just wasn't good enough, so relegated Sunderland bought him for their Championship stint. Kamara was the starting keeper but I replaced him with someone younger so I let him go, and Maylon was a young keeper I had picked up on a free, but he couldn't get a work permit to renew his contract, so I let him go cheap with a big percentage of next sale clause. Now, info on the 9 players I brought in. I had my eye on Isaac Urbina last January to solidify our DL spot with that Determination, Natural Fitness, and Work Rate. We didn't have the budget last season, but I was able to trigger his release clause as soon as we confirmed safety Silvio Rodrigues is a young backup for the wing that I also triggered the release clause for. I have high hopes for him. Ferran Quetglas is the young keeper I mentioned above. He looks fairly comparable to Kamara, but is younger and has more room to grow, I think. Rory Johnston was a Chelsea youngster who they didn't seem to want, so I decided to spend 2M on him and see if I can utilize his pace. Willy Kambwala was on loan from Lazio last year and performed admirably, so I triggered his option to buy. Christian Eksola's contract was expiring at Inter, so I snapped him up. Liam Delap is a City youngster you may be familiar with. His contract was also expiring, and I figured he would be a good addition to our strike force. Alvaro Zambrano looked like a steal at under a million pounds to add to our midfield depth. Filip Mrsic was another midfield depth signing for us. With that, our squad to try to establish ourselves further in the Premier League is complete (until January). I'm pretty happy with our depth everywhere except for central defense, where I'm content with the depth but would like to add more. I'll keep my eyes out for someone for January if we need them. ---- But how have we done so far, before the window closed? Very very well. That draw at Newcastle was huge to show our ambition, IMO. Flying high early, but we haven't had any super tough fixtures yet. They'll be coming, I'm sure.

Bolton - End of 2026/27 Season Did we end as strong as we had been looking? Not quite, but we did have a tough run-in. The Everton loss is really the only result I'm fully "disappointed with", and even then we had a 20th minute red card and were comfortably safe, so I didn't mind it. Wait, did I say comfortably safe? Yep. Never worried for the run-in, it was a fantastic season. MASSIVE improvement from two seasons ago, which is all I wanted, and to do it comfortably mid-table is even better. This was our star: An absolute talisman in midfield, once he started clicking after our tough start to the season we started looking really impressive. I'm expecting him to get some interest from larger clubs this summer, but I'll do what I can to keep him.

great pickups! I have had lots of success with both in FM22

With how much you rolled League One, you're in a good spot for top half based on my experience.

Bolton - March 2027 A bit more up and down than the last update, but still getting points. We've hit "would have been safe in every Premier League season of this save" levels of points, so I'm feeling good. We don't have the best run-in, but we're 11 points from the drop zone with 9 matches to go. Not totally safe, but in a good spot.

Bolton - End of 2026 you love to see it. You also love to see 5 wins and 2 draws in December and late November! That puts us with some breathing room above the drop zone, and already with more points and more wins than our first attempt at the Premier League two seasons ago. We're well below the top teams, but we are right about at the same level as the bottom half, so if we keep getting those results we'll be just fine.

November 2026 Pretty rough as far as points go, but really, none of these are bad results? Would have been nice to get a win against Everton instead of a draw, but the rest are probably results we'd expect. Hopefully we get some more weaker teams at home soon to rack up more points. Our performances have been a lot better than the last attempt too. Where are we sitting after this rough start to the season? Just outside the relegation zone, which is pretty good for only 7 points in 10 matches. A few more home results and we'll have a little more breathing space.

does Ballard count? I don't remember if he was bought at any point, but he's real solid in FM22

Bolton Squad Review - 2026/27 Let's talk about the first team squad a bit. GKs: Bingourou Kamara is the starter, bought this summer from Strasbourg for 2.3M. After Joel Coleman was bought away from me in January, I wasn't happy with any of the available options to buy, so I brought in someone on loan to last until summer. That GK was eventually beat out by my existing backup(who you'll see in a moment), so I had to try to find someone. Kamara was available and seems...adequate? Jonas Krumrey is the backup, who finished out the end of last season as the starter. I got him on a free from Austria before my first Premier League season as I needed a backup, and that's just about where he's stayed. Nothing too special, but a reasonable backup. DRs: Dion Sanderson is the starter. I brought him in for 5M from Wolves after he was on loan last season and killed it. He's not necessarily outstanding in any specific area, but he just performed. Excited to have him permanently. Taylor Gardner-Hickman is the backup. I brought him in permanently for 4M before our first attempt at the Premier League after he'd had two great loan seasons in our two promotion years. He's...fine? Pretty good even? He just didn't perform quite as well as Sanderson did. DCs: Kenny Morgan is our best central defender, and one of the two stars of the academy. Loads of appearances last season in the Championship and he killed it. Very excited to see him try to make the step up to the Premier League. I think he can handle it. Willy Kambwala is here on loan this season and I honestly don't know if he'll be able to make it in the Prem. I brought him in for his potential and his physical attributes and because I was able to get an optional future fee of 7.5M on this loan, so if he does develop well this season I can take advantage of that. Ricardo Santos has been a staple of the squad from the beginning of the save, but he's finally starting to go downhill. I think he's got another season in him, but I don't think he'll make it through the whole thing at this level. Jorge Segura was a free transfer in during 2022, and has been super solid for us. He's probably also just about reached his level, but if I go down again, he'll be a reasonable squad member back in the Championship, so I don't want to let him go. DLs: Kik Pierie feels like he might have been a steal? I brought him in for 4M in January after Facundo Medina had his head turned by Brighton, and he's been good! A bit inconsistent to start, but with a full preseason I trust him. Because he was good at the end of the season last time. Jordan Hackett. I panicked a bit here, honestly. I couldn't find a backup DL so I looked through on-loan players and he was the only reasonable one. I maybe should have waited until closer to deadline day? But a lot of my other purchases took most of my budgets, so I didn't have a huge selection. MCs/DMs: Peter Lacko is our record signing. 10M from Aston Villa this summer and I'm very excited. I think he has a ton of potential and I intend to give him the playtime to show it off. Henrik Thomsen is probably our best player. 7.5M release clause from Midtjylland this summer, beating out several other clubs who I would have expected he was more interested in. But he looks great, even now. Ben Pearson was brought in for free before our first Premier League season and just hasn't ever clicked with the team. I'll probably give him a couple more tries this season, but at 31? I don't think he should be a regular starter over some of our younger players. Garry Thompson is the other star of the youth academy. I brought him back in January for half a season with the first team squad and he was our best player in the second half of the season, being one of the key figures behind our increased consistency and push to promotion. Very excited to see him perform in the Prem. Wouter Burger was another player brought in for our first Prem campaign who just wasn't ready at the time. 2.6M from Basel, but he was super solid in the Championship last season, even if he's probably just a squad player this season after our other signings. Aaron Morley is another squad player. He's been with us since League One! 75k from Rochdale and a very solid squad player who has been consistently quite reasonable from the start of the save, if never spectacular. Khalon Haysman has been a bit of a pet project of mine since his trial in summer 2022 and he has developed well! A solid performer who has been awesome for a free signing back in League One. Wingers: Marcus Forss was just bought for 7M this summer from Brentford for wing depth, since I was really worried about that. A little more than I wanted to pay, but I was worried. Luis Henrique is the other player who has an argument to be our best player. I got him for 2M from Marseille before last season! He was awesome for us, a nailed-on starter with 11 goals and 6 assists from the wing. I think he'll definitely be able to make the step up, he felt better than the Championship. Josh Koroma. A squad player on the wings, but he's been fine to step in when he needed to. He won't blow you away, but also won't be a huge disappointment. Not much to say about him honestly. Felix Nmecha. I was surprised to get him this summer for 1.3M. I think he's better than that and I'm hopeful he can show it in the Premier League. Strikers: Joe Gelhardt. Leeds didn't want him, so I spent 6M to grab him. I've had success with him in the Premier League before, so hopefully he can make up for the loss of aging, left on a free transfer Kieffer Moore. Terem Moffi. If Gelhardt can't, maybe this guy can. Nice was trying to offload him for 2M, so I grabbed him. I really need to find goals from somewhere, since I sure couldn't last time in the Premier League. ---- And that's the squad. Maybe in January I'll be able to do some slight reinforcement in places that are obviously not good enough, but I'm feeling good about this. I'll keep an eye out for bargains around Deadline Day, but I feel ok about the squad as-is for this attempt to stay up.

Getting ready for our second attempt to stay up in the Premier League, we're making a lot of moves this time, and hopefully of a much higher quality than last time. I have some hope this time, compared to last attempt. The quality of the squad has gone way up in the past two years, and I think that should be able to turn a few of our losses last time into draws. I'll be doing a full squad review sometime soon here.

As it turns out, today's just a day I can make a lot of progress! Even though we had clinched first place (by a lot!), we got to have a huge impact on the final table. That final day win at Middlesbrough kept them out of the automatic promotion spots! Our new stadium is going forward, about another 10k seats in it. It's a lot of money, but hopefully won't ruin us long-term.

Apparently, consistency in the Championship is incredibly important and rare: Guess we're trying the Premier League again!

Bolton - Mid-March 2026 The Cups kinda killed our momentum a bit at the end of January, but we got it right back starting in February. Where did that leave us? Oh, we're a bit clear at the top now, I guess. Let's keep it up! In January, I brought back a youth player I had sent on loan because I wanted to give him some time. He's been performing quite well, as you can see! 5 assists in 7 appearances.

Ugh, League One Blackburn just triggered my starting GK's 6.5M release clause and now I have to scramble to replace him...

Bolton - January 2026 Last time, we were struggling a bit immediately post-relegation. How are we faring now? Significantly better. A couple tough away losses in the past 3 months, but we're winning more consistently. Our xG is consistently high, but loan striker Troy Parrott is struggling with goals. Enter Kieffer Moore: Signed to be a backup last season in the Premier League, he's stuck around as a good influence in the locker room, but I expected him to just be our Cup striker. However, he's taken his chances much better than Parrott recently and has taken over as starter. We just play much better with him right now. And where has he dragged us to? It's tight at the top of the Championship! A little bit of extra quality up front would probably help us get across the line again, but it's tough to find in January.

I was able to fend off interest for one of my youth players from the Premier League He's starting to play for the first team this season, and I think he has some solid potential.

Bolton - October 2025 Honestly, been a bit rough after the drop. We're not scoring quite to the level I'd like and that's leading to a TON of draws. We're in the playoff spots, but I was hoping for an automatic promotion this time. If we start to find our goals we can easily still get there, but some minor early struggles.

Bolton - Summer Transfer Update Honestly, not as many outs as I expected after relegation I think the squad is in a good spot for the Championship, only losing Emmanuel Dennis, who threw a fit after we were relegated. Which is fair, he was our best player. I was able to make 1M on him, which is something. We also released a few people who were absolutely not good enough for the Prem, and probably not even good even for the Championship: I'm feeling good about our chances to go right back up. We made a fight of it in the Prem last season with basically the same squad, hopefully having a lower level of competition is just what we need.

Nicely done! Looks like it was not really a challenge at any point this season, but that's ok sometimes! The jump to the Championship is more interesting anyway.

It just never came together. Made it until Matchday 35 before it was confirmed, but every good-looking run was immediately interrupted. Still, it's better than I had expected. More than 20 points is pretty decent for a double promotion, IMHO. We'll be in a great spot after going back down, and maybe I can start to bring in some of our developing academy players in the Championship (there are some gems in there).

I don't actually think this is harsh at all. We made a fight of it after a double promotion from League One, with a squad that was nowhere near Premier League level. I was expecting worse than this!