I guess if you are not going to pick a side based on emotional ties, curiosity, completing a challenge someone set, or some other innate reason, then I'd look over the current club finances and the stadium capacity and facilities. Picking a club which isn't inches from administration, has a little bit of salary room, and has a decent stadium capacity so you can have a revenue stream when you start doing well, will make the task a little more straightforward. In terms of building for the future, it is nice to be able to have a decent youth program you can stock with players, which will later either populate your side, or generate revenues when bigger clubs come calling (a trend you can't avoid for a while, but eventually want to stop). While I know some people have reservations about using a tool like Genie Scout, here's a place where using it makes sense, because the game itself doesn't make it easy to do this kind of research, even though the data is there. I'm pulling up an in progress game and looking... note this is an example, the teams in League 1 at this point will have no relationship to your game at all:
- Bradford has a decent financial state (+3.1m), some transfer budget, and a stadium capacity of 25k. That's a decent choice by my criteria, but they're also listed has having very poor youth facilities and no academy; that's an issue in being able to build for the future.
- Bristol Rovers are -600k on the financial side, have no transfer budget, tiny wage budget, and even worse youth facilities, and capacity of 16,650. I'd stay away.
- Crystal Palace have about 1/2m, for the division a decent wage budget but no transfer budget, decent training and youth facilities, an academy, and good stadium.
- Hull City have 5.6m in funds, a big wage budget though no transfer budget, good facilities and decent youth facilities, no academy, good stadium capacity.
- Millwall (further down) have some money, less than Bradford, and a smaller transfer budget, and smaller stadium, but they'd still be a possibility.
- Reading are in debt and as a result have poor budgets, but do have good facilities, an academy, and a good stadium.
Probably from that subset I'd pick Hull, again remember this is just an example.
