The key, I've found, is to sell off a couple of solid, untrainable players, plunk down the $80k for a passable coach (the difference is immense, IMO), pick up some cheaper trainees, train them like hell, and wait. And wait. And wait.
Hattrick is about as dynamic as chess by mail, but rewards come to those who are patient.
Me and a mate used to play that. We cheated our arse off, and he got caught and banned and i stopped cos i was bored. He then started again recentely, and the silly twit poured 100 euros into the system and then got banned for cheating
But a really funny thing was he started a thread on the forum.. and asked what was the biggest scandal that ever happened in managerzone.. the moderators replied by saying his former user name (burninhellforpleasure), by saying he quit and then sweared on all 10 of his fake accounts!
Man, you have a pretty beefy squad compared to my bottom-dweller unit ("Whitney FC" in VI.117). I've only been playing about a season, so you may want to give me a couple of seasons to build up some to even make a friendly modestly interesting.