Extra money:

Set the salary of your worst player to £99.9 million. Spend all of your funds and the board will begin to complain. Release your player and you will have millions of pounds.

Good players:
A player that must be purchased no matter who you are is Barcelona's Javier Saviola. With a sell-on clause, you can get his value down to about £1.5 million. Play him on the left wing (although he is a striker). Look for a player in any position with good pace and power stats (the only important stats for a winger) and play him on the right wing. The quality of crossing will not always be great but they will get past their men easily, and Saviola will not run the ball out very often down the left (unlike most wingers).

Upfront, there are a number of quality players available. There are the obvious ones: Batistuta, Trezeguet, Owen, Ronaldo, etc, but watch for pace, power, control and agility in your forwards (shooting does not really matter). A good cheap player with potential if you start a default game is 16 year old Paraguayan F. Torres. He should have 92 on pace and about 50 on shooting. You can get him (without sell-on) for about £140 thousand. Also, if you can afford it, buy Pascal Zuberhuler (Leverkusen) as your goalie.

A good player for not much money is Sammy Baumgart of Wolfsburg.