Should I spend £80?

[khris]

As Dave mentioned, it takes into account the best 14 -players with contracts pending to renew included- as the squad min. size is formed by 14 players, you can't sell more players if you have just 14 and thats the reason behind it.

Then, the game, needs a system to work. As each competition have limited spots the game have to, for example, in the case of the Cup, take a number of teams to fill the places. Same to complete the CL competitions, it starts doing the 1st Cup and CL/SL from the Top Server -what we called shark cup- so the best teams in terms of AvQ join the first cup, so 1st-64th, 65th-128th join the 2nd and like this from, each server top level, until the level 1 where the game can create bot tems to complete the competitions.

Remember that, different situations could happen next season. First of all, by facing +1 levels they have the market advantadge, so their 5* looks like 6* for you, and this means a extra effort to equalize the distances.
Second, in your league, you could meet a tanker, a manager that don't promote so could have a 140%+ team and in this case could be placed for sure in your Cup, CL, and League.
If I lower the AvQ is because in case that the level have 2 league groups, the strong teams and those tankers, will be placed in one league group and the lower ones on the other.

All is about to have knowledge of the system, once you have this knowledge, you'll realize that this game have like 1200 free boosters and a way to play that allow any manager to spend "0" real money to compete.

So you can have a progress during the season from the day 1 when you will start maybe 79% AvQ, signing new players, training then to compete and reach finals, so, feeling that you advance and too that you need, from that point more knowledge regarding the players internal programming, because with every signing you will have to test players.
You never will have 2 identical teams because of the way players are internally designed and the way the game assigns the internal roles of contribution, so at certain point you'll need a effort understanding how your team is designed, and by understanding this, you'll make the differance.