Ten minutes of reading you don't strictly need. The game explains itself as it goes.
Type a name, pick a difficulty, pick a club. Difficulty is financial: it sets your budget, wage room and spending allowance. You get one month of pre-season, two friendlies and an open transfer window before the league starts.
Press CONTINUE and the days pass until something needs you: a bid, an injury, a press question, a team sheet. Anything that requires an answer stops the clock. Offers for your own players are the exception: you can sit on those while you play on, but ignored buyers chase once and then walk.
The Paper is optional reading: results, gossip and the back pages. Nothing in it needs an answer.
Matches play in six segments of fifteen minutes. At any pause you can change mentality and style or make substitutions (five per match). At half time you can also pick a team talk. Player ratings move with the football as it happens.
Bid through the Market screen. Sellers open high and come down as talks go on; the price only rises when a rival enters or the talks leak. Deals can stall over image rights, get hijacked late, or collapse at the medical. When several clubs chase one of your players, the inbox gathers the race into a single view.
Availability matters: a cornerstone at a big club will not come just because you ask. Watch the status column.
Cash and spending-rule room are different things. Every club starts from its real squad-cost position: some have hundreds of millions of room, some start over the line. Transfer fees spend room (spread over the contract), sales restore it. Finish a season over the red line and points follow. The accountant tells you where you stand on day one and every quarter.
An intake arrives each summer. The youth coach reports when someone stands out, recommends who is ready, and releases the ones who were never going to make it. Promote from the Youth tab of the Squad screen. Some kids are late bloomers; some fade; the coach's star ratings are his opinion, not a guarantee.
The board judges you against expectations set by your squad's value, and their patience is finite. Lose it and the fax arrives. Getting sacked is not the end: the job market opens, and your reputation decides who will have you next.