When a new season begins I discovered 2 seasons ago on my server that when it opens up after maintenance there are Nordeus generated players on the transfer market to get the auctions going at the beginning of the season and they are all young 18-20 years 5* players and theres about 30-50 of them, so getting in just after start of the new season has worked for me the last few seasons I've picked up 5 good young players this way that I normally use as back up or if they are ace trainers then I may even power train them.
If you list players with less than 3 hours left to maintenance then the system normally makes the auctions last over 5 hours to cover for maintenance time.