Your first week is about learning where things are without breaking anything. Nobody wins the league on day one. Here is a sensible order.
- Start at Home. You land there every time you open the game: your live or next game, your calendar and whatever needs your attention right now. Then read the Headlines in PR: they tell you what is happening at your club and in your league. See News.
- Meet your players. Open the Roster, sort it and read each player's skills; Ratings explains what every skill does. Do not judge anyone by DMI or listed best position: the manual itself calls both very rough.
- Check the clock. Your Calendar shows games, training and the economy update in your own time zone. Anything you want to change for a game must be in at least 15 minutes before tip-off (2 minutes for a scrimmage). See Weekly Schedule.
- Set your lineup. Open your next game from the Calendar (or go to Tactics) and choose the 12 players who dress, your starters, backups and reserves, and an offense and a defense. The defaults are not a plan. Put at least three starters in the depth chart, or the coach may redo the lineup. See Games and Tactics.
- Choose your training. Pick a training area and the positions to train, then make sure those players will play: 48 minutes a week for ages 20 to 26, 45 for 18 and 19, 40 for 27 and older. See Training.
- Book a scrimmage. Once you are out of the cup (clubs still in it cannot book scrimmages), find an opponent in Friendlies, under Competitions, or accept an offer another club sent you. It is an extra game of training and experience. Bookings are closed from Wednesday 17:00 to Saturday 03:00 UTC. See Scrimmages.
- Read the Economy page. Compare weekly salaries with weekly income and learn the difference between Current and Available Balance. New teams get $50,000 a week for four weeks and no salary floor for 24 weeks: breathing room, not a fortune. See The Economy.
- Visit your arena. Look at attendance by seat type after your first home games before touching prices or seats. See The Arena.
- Say hello. Your league has a chat room of its own, on the CHAT tab of My League, and the world room is on Live Activity. Plenty of managers there enjoy answering questions, and the friendly ones can go straight onto your Buddy List. See Chat Rooms.
What not to do yet
- Do not build Team Infrastructure. The manual calls it a luxury not intended for fresh teams, with steep building costs and weekly maintenance.
- Do not expand the arena on a hunch. Wait until sections sell out. Construction takes time, and the estimates are optimistic.
- Do not fire staff to save money. Firing costs nothing, but a Doctor, Trainer or PR Manager you fire is replaced at once by one of minimal skill, and a minimal essential staff member costs you more than the salary you save. See Staff.
- Do not sell half the roster. Sale fees are lowest on players you have owned for a long time and climb the more you have sold recently, and some fans hate seeing their favourites listed. See Transfer List.
- Do not bid money you cannot spare. Bids cannot be retracted, and debt costs 5% a week.
- Do not call Crunch Time every game. Each one needs a week or two of recovery.
- Game Shape counts from day one. There is no grace week: your very first training update already uses the minutes your players have played since the club was set up. Only the first training update of each season is different: it resets everyone to the same starting Game Shape.
That is plenty for week one. Before you set your second lineup, read How a game is decided; the tactics screen will look a lot less like a slot machine.