I am in the 4th season on my blackburn game. first two seasons i finished 9th and a lot of my good players wanted to leave but the next season i finished 5th and got into europe and now i am in 2nd after 12 games and looking strong.
at the start of mine i sold a lot of players (jason brown, andre ooijer, emerton.8 mil, olsson 4.8mil) to get some extra funds and bought in D'alessandro the left back guilherme. Gamez a spanish right back and skjelberd (who was playing at a good premier league standard as soon as i bought him. i also got a few well known young players like fleck, lewandowski etc to stablise my squad to give me something to build on to push for eurpoean football.
2nd season i sold more players as my squad improved for a million here and there to again bolster my transfer budget and to get rid of the dead weight.
This season i focused on strengthening my squad signing players like micheal owen on a free, ben fostor on a free (backup) huddlestone for 7 mil (tank in midfield
) David luiz 7.5 mil and stewart downing for 8mil (boro got relegated and he has got me more than 20 assists each season)
3rd season i let owen go for 4 mil (he wants playing well and i got him on a free) and spent most of my budget on Kierrison who has been amazing alongside santa cruz.
main thing i have found with blackburn is you need to be stubborn and hold onto your best players until you strengthen your squad enough to get a good final position in the league.