Depending on what date your at, look for released players from the Premier League and Championship, and offer trials to anyone in the 17-20 age and then do the same for Leagues 1 & 2 but increase the age to 30.
You should be able to rebuild a squad easily enough with a transfer budget of £0, but if you are past the contract release date, the number of freebies does drop fairly fast.
Edit. When you go to the Transfer tab, go to your DoF and ask for recomendations for every position that is a free agent or loan target. They will come back with upto 3 options if there are any that they rate, then you offer a trial if not signed with anyone or scout them if they are at a club
thanks @aussielad, My transfer window perhaps wasnt as efficiently done as your suggestion but seems to have gone well so far. I’ve pretty much built up a new squad with just 4 or 5 lads from last season and have created sufficient depth that I can rotate them more easily to keep fresh and hopefully minimise injuries. Biggest issue may be keeping them all happy - I promised too many of them that they are star players or that they will play the key games I just hope that we continue winning and that by rotating regularly they will not kick up a stink about it.
Went with the 424 wing play as I have picked up some good forwards. I’m 7 games in to the season, winning 6 and drawing 1, dominating most of those games. So managed to meet the immediate target of 8 pts in 5 games and pick up a manager of the month award too!
Back in the day when I played (probably 25+ years ago) the earlier FM games that was what I did. I had two jobs one with Utd to ruin them as much as possible, and one with Liverpool to try to win everything.
I create another player and took the united job and spend all their budget to buy Voronin, I get alot of money to buy players and they got their season screwed with no money to buy other players
I just hope that we continue winning and that by rotating regularly they will not kick up a stink about it.