Surviving your first top-flight season in Football Manager 26 is one of the toughest challenges the game throws at you. Promotion feels like a triumph — and it is — but the jump in quality, finances, and expectations hits the moment the new season loads. Suddenly, you’re in a league where even the midtable sides have deeper squads, bigger wage bills, and players capable of punishing every mistake you make. If you don’t adjust quickly, the same momentum that carried you up can drag you straight back down.
To avoid becoming a one-and-done story, you need a plan that goes beyond simply “sign better players.” Staying up requires clear-eyed evaluation, smart financial discipline, and a tactical identity built for survival rather than dominance. The three pillars below — cutting dead weight, stretching a shoestring budget, and adapting your tactics — form a blueprint that gives newly promoted clubs a fighting chance in the season that matters most.
Cut The Dead Weight
The gulf in quality between the second tier and the top flight is enormous in virtually every league in FM26. Whether you’re moving from the Championship to the Premier League or Serie B to Serie A, you’ll suddenly be competing with clubs whose wage budgets alone dwarf your entire operating budget. And more money almost always equates to more quality.
Your first job after going up is to take a brutally honest look at your current squad. Identify who can realistically contribute at a top-flight level and who simply can’t survive the step up. Clearing out players who aren’t good enough does two crucial things: it frees wages for signings who can keep you competitive, and it opens squad spots so you’re not wasting registration slots on players you’ll never trust in a relegation battle.
When taking a club from the lower divisions to the top, loyalty and sentimentality can take hold and cloud your judgment. As someone who’s played Football Manager for years, take it from me — this can ruin your long-term prospects and competitive viability. Just because someone has played a massive role in getting you promoted doesn’t mean that they’ll have enough in their locker to keep you there. Avoid paying top-flight money for players who aren’t cut out for it, as it’ll stifle your financial and tactical flexibility.
Working On A Shoestring Budget
As mentioned earlier, newly promoted clubs rarely compete financially with established top-flight sides. Unless you’re rebuilding a fallen giant climbing its way back up, your wage and transfer budgets will be a fraction of even what midtable clubs can offer. You can’t chase the same players they chase, and you can’t solve every weakness with money. Instead, survival hinges on adapting to your circumstances: stretching every dollar, finding undervalued talent, and refusing to overspend just because you finally made it to the big leagues.
One way to do this is by prioritizing wages over transfer fees. Even if you are getting a player at a very good rate, the acquisition is useless if they’re making $4 million a year (€70k/week) and aren’t helping you stay afloat.
With that in mind, here are the types of players you should be targeting:
- players with expiring contracts
- relegated club standouts
- out-of-favor squad players at bigger teams
- players who want “loan to buy” deals
- veterans on reduced wage demands
This also ties into what we talked about before when it comes to trimming the fat in your squad. Every penny will count in a survival campaign, so if you have anyone who doesn’t fit your vision and is still under contract, look to move them immediately, either through a transfer or a loan where the other team is paying at least half of their wages (look to include a reasonable optional future fee too).
Also, loans are a manager’s best friend! Upon getting promoted, look at the top teams in your league and search for decent players who are on their loan lists. More often than not, bigger clubs will pay a majority of a player’s wages so long as they’re getting minutes, so you can get these loan players without them destroying your wage budget. No matter what, don’t fall victim to the temptation to splurge cash you don’t have because you want to “announce yourself” to the top flight. 3-5 solid contributors are worth more than one marquee signing.
Last, but not least, try to keep contracts short. If you survive a year in the top flight, you will be financially rewarded and should see your operating budget become more flush moving forward. This becomes more difficult if your squad is clogged with 4-year contracts that have diminishing returns.
Set Your Tactics For Survival
One of the biggest mistakes newly promoted clubs make is assuming their promotion-winning tactics will translate to the top flight. It usually won’t. Higher-level opponents are faster, more technical, and far more clinical, which means your favorite patterns of play may suddenly become liabilities. Survival often requires swallowing your pride and adapting to a more pragmatic setup, even if it feels like a step backwards from how you dominated the second tier.
Focus on tightening your defensive shape, reducing transition exposure, and lowering your line of engagement to avoid being carved apart by elite attackers. Emphasize stability over style: fewer risky roles, fewer roaming instructions, and more bodies behind the ball. You don’t need to “outplay” opponents — you just need to give them fewer chances to punish you. Even minor tweaks like adding a defensive midfielder, compressing your lines, or using a more direct counterattacking approach can buy you the points you need to stay up.
