When managing a lower league team such as Coca Cola Championship 1 league team, try this tips:

1. USE LONG-TERM LOANS CAREFULLY

In the English leagues, you can only take four England-based players on a season-long loan in one season, so don’t waste any of your four on speculative long-shots. Take the player on trial in pre-season first, so you can assess how good he really is before committing to a long-term loan. Which leads us on to…

2. BEWARE OF PARENT CLUBS

Becoming a feeder club for a higher-league side might seem like a good idea, but it usually gives them carte blanche to send you players on season-long loans. Given that in Coca-Cola League 2, the best you can usually hope for is a Championship parent club, this can mean one or more of your valuable season-long loan slots is occupied by a Doncaster youth teamer who couldn’t hit a pig’s backside with a banjo. Update: you can cancel the loan transfer of a player a parent club has sent you by going to the player’s screen and withdrawing your transfer bid.

3. LOAN PLAYERS TO TARGET

Unlike previous versions of Football Manager, Premiership players will normally sully themselves as far down as League 2, giving you a chance to pick some prime youngsters to bolster your squad. We’d particularly recommend Fred Sears (West Ham), Fabio (Man Utd) and Keith Treacy (Blackburn Rovers).  Premiership clubs will usually let you have loan players without contributing to their wages.

4. SCOUR THE BARGAIN BIN

The average lower-league transfer budget will rarely stretch to a bag of Maltesers for the team bus, let alone a new striker, so you’ll have to take full advantage of any free transfers that come your way. Advancing years and a lack of pace aren’t as much of a problem in the lower leagues as they are in the Premiership, so sort the free transfer list by international caps to find half-decent, experienced players who could fill gaps in your squad. Make sure you only offer them 12-month contracts, so they don’t become a drain on your wage bill when their knees finally give way in season two.

5. KEEP AN EYE ON THE WAGE BILL

Lower-league clubs have a total wage bill that even Carlton Cole wouldn’t bother getting out of bed for, so don’t waste a penny. Ship out any high earners that aren’t guaranteed first-team starters, as it will give you more scope in the transfer market. Try to keep your total wage bill 10% below the budget, so that the board won’t tug on the purse strings should you need to draft in an emergency signing.

6. LISTEN TO THE GRAPEVINE

The new transfer gossip menu (represented by the ear icon) is a god-send for sniffing out potential loan and free-transfer targets. You can normally nip in and steal a deal before the club rumoured to be signing a player gets its arse in gear.

7. DON’T GO SHOPPING ON TRIAL DAYS

The new trial day facility – where free agents play in a game arranged by the players’ union to impress prospective managers – is well worth attending, but don’t buy players solely on the strength of their performance in this match. The standard of play is abysmal, meaning that Jason Lee could look like Pele for 90 minutes. Take a player on trial and assess him in your own pre-season games before offering him a contract.

8. DON’T GET TOO CREATIVE

The vast majority of players in the lower leagues have all the creativity of a breeze block, so don’t be too adventurous with your tactics. Only give Creative Freedom to one or two attacking loan players you’ve managed to prise from Premiership clubs, and keep the rest on a tight rein. Similarly, keep tinkering with the formation to an absolute minimum. Bringing on an extra defender to hold on to a lead is sensible; switching from 4-4-2 to Glenn Hoddle’s Christmas Tree formation at half-time is suicidal.

9. CUPS RUNNETH OVER WITH CASH

With lower-league club chairman rarely give a flying toss about how well you do in the cups, it might be tempting to ‘do an Arsene’ and stick the stiffs out in cup games and concentrate on the vital league position. However, cup matches can prove a nice little earner, especially if you can make it through to the FA Cup third round, or even the latter stages of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, where a trip to Wembley could really bolster the transfer coffers. Even a scrawny win in the first round of the FA Cup provides a £20k bonus – enough to pay the wages for a week or so.

10. REST PLAYERS WHEN POSSIBLE

Lower-league squads are normally a mix of kids and pension dodgers, both of whom are prone to complain of tiredness come February or March. Consequently, take every opportunity you can to give a player a rest. No match for 10 days? Give them three days – or even a week – off training. Suspended for three games? Do Likewise, although make sure you hit them with a decent fine if they’ve been silly buggers.  If you have two or more internationals in your side, your league matches will be postponed on international weeks, providing another opportunity to tell the rest of the squad to put their feet up. Esepcially as those postponed games will lead to heavy congestion at a later date. And Fergie thinks he’s got it tough…

FM 2010 isn’t just about managing down in the depths, it’s about playing by a set of rules to make FM as realistic as possible. That means things like not using real players (so you don’t know in advance who the stars/bargains/wonderkids are) and only signing players that a real life manager would realistically have seen.