The game does seem to give little helping hands to the squads of teams who are either abandoned or just unorganised.
First round of the cup my opponent didn't have a goalkeeper in his squad. (Probably had gone out of contract). But player did not log in to do anything about this. Game starts and the opponent had a GK appear in the team from somewhere (A Nordeus little helping hand GK). I won 1-0.
By the next game my opponent had got himself sorted out and had signed a GK again, a different one, one not as good as the game had given him free for the first match. I won 2-0.
He'd have been better off letting the game find and pick his players