I have a core of 9 free Academy players which I keep at all times, I always sign the free player and either sell him on straight away or sell one of my older 3 position SA ones if a good offer comes in. I have a goalkeeper, an AMC and a striker who I have also all had since they were 18 but at various points have made it to 7 stars.
So that's 12 players who come to a one star average.
I maybe keep another one or two 5 star player for the start of the season just so my Cup team has 4 or 5 good players to go with the remainder.
On the third day of the season I buy 7 or 8 five star players, they don't have to be high five star or even young as long as they are 5 star.
At the end of the season, when the Cup and CL finals have been played there is a two day gap to sell all the players I bought on day 3 and I am back to 14 players averaging one star.
This makes the League and Cup easily winnable but the CL is quite a task, the only game I lost last season was the CL final 4-0.
It's manipulation and takes about 5 seasons to have enough Academy players to make it work, but once the core of low quality players are there then it works fine.
Here's the last day of last season, so the 4 better players have all dropped a star.
My League draw is a 2* average, as is my Cup draw. My CL group has two 4* teams and a 3* team due to this.
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