You just took over the club of your choise, looked in your news and saw that the team's old coach hasbeen sucked and you appointed in his place. You have to evaluate your team and there are two actions you need to take in the first place:

1. Check your team's funds
   You need to do this in order to get a general idea of how rich the club is and understand how many and how expensive players you can buy. You can do this eiter by going to search for a player, click on a player and go to approach to buy and on the screen that appears you will see how much money the board lets you spend, or go to the club's stats (from the {your team} squad-->finances-->view transfer funds. Note that there are two values, transfer funds and balance, and the money you have may differ from those that can be allocated to a transfer. This is because the chairman might withhold some of the club's income as an "insurance" for the future, or to outpay debts you already have. On the other hand sometimes transfer funds may be over the budget's balance. This will mostly happen if you are successful in your work as a manager and the clubs financial status is secure, meaning that your chairman trusts you!
   Important note: When evaluating your team's financies, it is also important to take a look at the wage structure. Go to your team's main screen and sort players by wage. This is vey useful, because you will not be able ot attract players who currently get a much higher wage than the one you can afford!
2. Analyze your team's squad
   This is perhaps the most important movement you will do in your first days as a manager. It will allow you to learn your team's weeknesses and strong points, so that you go and buy the appropriate players. If you are managing a known club, it is highly possible that you already know the players and know who is playing at which position on the pitch. If you are working with a lower division club or random players, then you will have to start from scratch!
   The first thing you will need to do is keeping a basic tactic your mind. What makes the difference between a good manager and top-rated manager is the ability to adjust his chosen tactic to his team's squad. However almost anywone playing CM has a couple of standard tactics and we all prefer to adjust the squad to the tactic, buying the appropriate players instead of adjusting the tactic to our players, and just doing some fine tuning at a later stage.For more see choosing a tactic in your first day. For a complete tactic analysis visit our tactics bible
   Now You will have to take a closer look at the team's players. The first thing to do is filter the players by position and by side. Then you will have to click on everyone of your players and evaluate him. Is he good enough to stay at your club? Will he be able to hold a first-team place, or just be a substitute? Will you probably put him in the reserves (is he a promising youngster) or maybe is he to be transferlisted? It is far too important to keep in mind that you need a first-team player and a substitute for each position. So if you are playing 4-4-2 you will need 4 DCs, 2 top-class and 2 substitutes. The same applies to all positions.
   It is important when looking at players to know which are the most important attributes for each position. In case you are new to CM you might want to check our important attributes guide. You might also want to compare players players playing at the same position using the compare two players function, and i quite often ask my coaches opinion, especially for players which i am going to have transfre listed.
   Now that you know your squad you know what additions you need! Time to move on to everyone's favourite issue, buying and selling players!

Definitely the first thing to do when you are starting the game. There are some players who are out of contract at the start of the game. It's players whose contract has expired and have the right to negotiate a new contract with whichever club they want, or players no team wants.

You should go to search for a player and use the filter "contact expired". This will show you all of theplayers out of contract. Click on a player, see his stats and do either of the following:

• Offer a trial: You can offer the player a trial period of up to 2 weeks so that you can evaluate him better. Select this only if it is a player for whom you are the only team interested or he will not accept.
• Offer a contract

It is important that you realise most of the players out of contract are just crap you don't need to care about. However there are a few that are out of contract just because their team could not keep them.

The second big rule, since the new transfer system got underway is signing U17s. Before the age og 17, players can't sign a professional contract and you can get them by simply offering a compensation to their club. Freddy Adu is a typical exemple!

You have evaluated your squad and now you know what type of players you need to search for.

Go to the search a player screen and apply the appropriate filters. Then select the attrinute range you want your player to be in and click search. What you should know:

1. Eu national or not? It is very important to know the transfer regulations in the league you are working at. Will the player be able to get a work permit? How many foreigners are allowed? Maybe you should search for players froim some specific region, and EU national is a good start.
2. Interested or not? There are two reasons a player migh want to come to your club: The club's reputation and the manager's reputation. Your own reputaion is zeo at the beginning of the game, so the players migh not be interested in coming to your team. I recommend that you put the "player interested" filter on. This way your search will be restricted to those that might accept to join the team. Keep in mind that a player returned by the search with the filter on is not sure to negotiate with you. It is just more likely to accept compared to the rest. On the other hand you might be able to buy a player who is not interested; however you will need to pay much more in matters of wages and signing on fees
3. Contract: You will see the following values: any, expired, expiring, unprotected. If you are at the start of the game, the values of interest are the any and expired. The rest values mean:
   expiring
   A player whose contract expires in the next 6 months, is free to negotiate a contract with any club. His transfer will take place at the end of his current contract. His current team will take no money for the transfer
   Unproctected
   A player can megotiate a contract with another club 3 years after the start of the current contract (2 years if he is over 28). His current team is entitled to receiving a fee determined by a jury. Howevr this fee is usually far less than the player's actual value. This is a new rule, so all contracts signed before the start of the game are protected, and this value becomes of interest only if you have been playing the game for at least 3 years.
4. When choosing the attributes, you should always have in mind the attributes that are most important for each position. For more on this subject check here.
5. A general rule is that if you are looking for a first team player his attrinutes should be at or above the maximum of your team players' attributes, whereas if you are looking for a reserve player, he can be slightly worse.
6. Prices you will have to pay: If you click on a player and then click on transfer you will see his estimated value and transfer status. If the player is a first team regular in his current team, you will need at least twice his estimated value to buy him. Sometimes for some South Amrican young talents you migh need up to 10 times their estimated value.
7. Always keep in mind that though the team might let you negotiate with the player, the player migh reject! He might not even enter into negotiations with you or accept to negotiate but tell you that "he is not interested because he is very happy with his current role at his team". There is nothing you can do in the first case (the old trick with approaching to buy him several times in a row until he gets angry with his current manager does not seem to work in the newer version), whereas in the second case you can offer him a very high transfer fee and the minimum contract duration possible (one month usually) In this case he will always accept and when he come to your team you can easily renew his contract. However this is sort of cheating and not recommended!
8. I normally make offers for at least 2 or 3 players that satisfy me search criteria for each position, because, especially if you are searching for a top player, he is more likely not to accept to join your club at the beginning of the game!

Provided that you are using real players, there are certain ways to buy a player at a low cost, relative to his actual value.(this is not a first-day issue of course but i think it is really worth mentioning here)

• Buy young players that will evolve to the game's new Ronaldos. There are three countries that continuously provide superstar youngsters: Argentina, Brazil (normal) and Sweden(!!!). Send your scouts to evaluate the U21 teams of these countries and they will certainly come up with brilliant cheap players. I also normally scout th English, Italian, French and German U21 teams, but players there are often quite expensive already. There are also certain teams that provide the best talents: West Ham and Aston Villa in England, Atalanta in Italy and of course River Plate, Boca Juniors and Corinthians. Scout players marked with an asterisk in these teams, you are likely to come up with supeb findings.
• Buy players who are unhappy. When a player is unhappy or has requested to move, his team is likely to sell him at around 60-70% of his estimated value. There are certain players that become unhappy near the start of the game, and you should try to buy him definitely. These include the superb Milan DMCs Gennaro Ivan Gattuso and Massimo Ambrossini, Inter's Binotto and Guly (not always) and others. The team with the highest rate of top-class unhappy players is definitely Milan, so i always take a look at their squad when i need a player!
• Buy players who are not first-team regulars
  There are certain players who are usually wandering to different clubs, some even getting transfered once a year. Some of football best players seem unable to act as first-team regulars in CM The top cases are Aimar (he is always sold cheap by Vlalencia at the 2nd or 3rd year) and Riquelme, followed by a buch of players for every wallet. I 'll come back with a detailed report on this subject.