I happen to like having competition, in League 1 I could just place a single bid on any player and safely assume no one will bid on it, 90% of the time I had the player, now I'm getting up to Round 10 on League 2.

I did rely on cheap 30+ year old players, now I have a new "criteria", 24 year old max. Players who are bought younger than that but each higher than that age can stay until their stars drop to 3/4. I normally sell my scouts after a season or two with a small loss of 100k but a big loss of 50 tokens. (I like to "rent" them lol)