Being patient is also helpful, choose your battles I have spent 4 days now trying to gain a DR but I'm still waiting for the right one.

When it comes to players on auction don't bid on players with special abilities (unless you have plenty tokens and its definitely the right player) these will attract the most competition. Look at the cash value for a player and pick the highest at his star rating. You then get a good trainer who you can teach any special ability you want to anyway.

A good example is to bid on 24 rated 18-21 yr old with a high cash price $ who you can train rather than 25 rated with a special ability who will appear in the auction list with an extra star rating and attract more competition.

Also the above advice on auctions "tricks" is good.