Hi all -

I've been doing the generic grab a 6th tier team and try to go to the premier league and win everything save, and I've been way too overpromoted from what is realistic. I'm playing as Torquay and after a slight 3 years being stuck in National League north/south, I've gotten back to back to back to back promotions and I'm now just got promoted to the Championship after getting second in League One! That's the cool parts

The not cool, my payroll budget is going to be half of the 23rd highest salary in that league, so I'm up against it this year for sure.

I am not a tactics master at all. I've been playing a positive 442. Basic stuff, Fullbacks and CD on the back line. Wingers on Attack, a BWM on D, usually a AP/B2B/DLP as the other, and a front line combo of AF/TF or AF/DLP. Its worked pretty well, although I do feel like Torquay board has always given me at least a middle of the road salary to build a team.

I have an affliation with Man City and I know I need to absolutely nail 6 stud loans, that much is obvieous, my questions are:

1) Any suggestions for tactical tweaks that could help me claw my way to 20th and survive? I know sticking with my 442 seems like a smart choice, but there is likely going to be alot of roster turnover, maybe less than I had originally thought with the budget I saw. My first thought was just loading up the direct counter attack 442 premade in the game and just going from there, seems like it wouldn't suck at least. Any other ideas? Instructions or things that just work when you are the underdog? I don't like just downloading something overpowered but I'm not against just finding out what works and doing that.

2) Talent acquistion, I've never gone this high before from a 6th tier save, I usually just grab a job from a bigger team once I find success and usually skip this step of team building where I'm punching way above my stature.

It does kind of feel like this is the part of the save where just spamming free agents for trials and grabbing some good players seems like I won't be able to find championship level players for free, but its probably too early to be just wonderkid searching. I moved some money in my scouting budget to get a Europe package from just England, so my idea is just try and maybe find some of those Spanish or Eastern Euro guys on low buyouts and hope from there. Is that a good idea? I have some players currently valued in the millions that I don't really rate that highly myself, so maybe hopefully I can find a buyer for a couple of those guys and have a $8ish Million Transfer budget instead of $300k, maybe I could make some decent moves then. Any thoughts?

For reference last year we had the 12th ranked team in the season preview, so we weren't super bad in L1 last year. Has there been any SYS episodes that talk about this kind of overpromotion? (I was 1st in XG last year, so I guess I can't call it overpromotion.)

If anyone has experience with this kind of jumping up to 2nd tier where free agents might not be the answer to improving the team anymore? I have 'attempt to avoid regulation' in my contract so even if we get messed up I'll be fine in the job, would be nice to survive and build though.

Thanks for reading!