Not a request or direct answer, but I felt like advertising my favourite FM team: Lyon.
If you're stuck with who to be, choose Lyon. They have:
- Great finances, no debt. I'm making 1-2m a month! My total player wages are 550k, and it starts at around 700k. Almost half of champion's league teams in other leagues.
- Great setup. Top training facilities, Excellent youth facilities which can be upgraded to max straight away. And I believe Extensive youth recruitment is the best too? Moving to a 60,000 stadium halfway through the 2013 season.
- Great youth. Grenier, Pjanic, Kolodzieack, Gonalons, Gassama, Tafer, Belfodil, Lacazette, Mehamha, Faure, Fontaine, Tapoko & Reale. All have the potential to be leading ligue 1 players. And this league isn't a joke anyway, you have a good standard of teams. Don't think i've seen another team with so many prospects. And if you look a little older, you have players like Lloris (23), Gourcuff (24), Cissokho (22), Lovren (20).
- Huge amount of french youth to buy. Personally, I like running my teams with a solid homegrown base. So in this case, mostly french players. In my second season I now have a squad of 24, with only 2 not being french (Pjanic & Babacar). Raphael Varane, Geoffrey Kondogbia, Yann M'vila, Moussa Sissoko, Adil Rami (I highly recommend signing the latter 2 asap). The list is almost endless. And from my experience, France seems to produce the best regens on this year's FM.
- Building on from the potential of the team, they can easily win the league in the first season, and do well in the champion's league if you avoid man utd, chelsea barca and real (they're all ridiculous in the first season). Fielded a whole youth team away vs ac milan in the group as I had already qualified in first, and I won 3-2! I recommend using Koflok's Goals Galore tactic for Lyon, it's working wonders for me.
So hopefully I've convinced some people to choose Lyon. I was thinking of making a guide, but it wouldn't really be too helpful for people as in the first 2 seasons I replace alot of good players for young french ones.