How to build a good squad on a small budget

Set the budget and the priorities

Before buying, decide how much you will spend on the whole squad and save most of it for a few positions. In most play styles, the players who decide the most are the striker, the two centre-backs and a midfielder who distributes the ball. Full-backs and the second holding midfielder accept simpler cards without the team dropping much.

Pace tends to be the most expensive attribute on the market. A fast card with a lower overall almost always costs less than a slow one with a high overall, and it usually performs better.

Hybrids are cheaper

A single-league squad forces you to buy that league's cards even when they are expensive. A hybrid mixes leagues and nations and gives you the freedom to pick the cheapest option in each position. The chemistry guide explains how many players you need from each group.

Start with the cards you already own and build the rest around them. Swapping a card you already have for another just to complete chemistry is the cost that hurts most early on.

Where to find good cheap cards

Special cards with a high rating but weak in-game attributes tend to be cheap, and the opposite also happens: base cards with the right pace and PlayStyles perform better than their overall suggests.

• The cheap 86+ page lists high-rated cards sorted from cheapest to most expensive.
• The price-range pages show the best cards in each area of the pitch below a given price.
• In search, filter by position, pace and PlayStyle and sort by price.

Buy at the right time

Prices drop when lots of people open packs at the same time, such as at the launch of big promos, and rise when an SBC starts asking for that kind of card. If you are not in a hurry, add the cards you want to the FCUTeam wishlist and turn on the alert: you get an email when the price drops.

Test before completing it

Build the squad in the FCUTeam squad builder before buying: it shows the cost of the starting XI and the chemistry of each slot. Buy the priority positions first and play a few matches before spending on the rest. The cheap card you bought as a filler often ends up staying.