If you have a decent scouting and coaching team any club could do what they do (bit harder up north mind), it's the old line of got to spend money to make money, but need to invest it in the future, rather than blow it on the now. After a couple of years if you keep doing the same, the development of the team (and bank balance) makes it well worth it.
- Pick the right players (typically strikers, which increase in value quickly)
- Play a system that suits your high value assets (Brentford do this, we don't or didn't)
- They absolutely must have a proven performance to a set level, or be a player where the reward outstrips the risk
- Pick them young (so they either go up in ability/ stay the same, ether way, you won't lose, or lose much)
- Keep them until they reach a suitable level (whether that's 1,2 or 3 years, but turnaround has to be quick)
- Sell them, don't mess about trying to keep players that are too good for you/ your division
- When discussing incoming transfers give the player a get out if they improve, more players will come if they know they can leave to go to the prem, with a heavily increased fee
- The scout, recruitment team and coaches should be one of the highest paid and best reputation members of the staff. No point paying 25 players 30k a week if you're going to have a £500 a week scout or just some ex player with no proven record coaching. This but is beyond basic, it's so ridiculous. It's just weighing up what you're spending against what return you're going to get for that, and if you can better spend that money elsewhere.
It's a bit like buying any asset, be it a house, a car or some shares, the purchase price doesn't really mean a lot, it's the difference in what you buy for and what you sell for that matters most, and the risk of it going to 0 or multiplying 100 times over (effectively like an equity value calculation in poker, risk, reward, probability). Also factoring in for finance costs (which is really important).
See, Brentford paid £5m for Toney, plus £5m addons? If he didn't score a single goal this year, then they would still get £3-4m for him, providing he never turned into an absolute donkey (but a scout could easily notice this). But what if he scores 10, what is he worth then? £8m? What if he scores 20? £25m?
Even if all those had the same probability:
33% * 3.5m = 1.15m
33% * 8m = 2.64m
33% * 25m = 8.25m
So, 99% = 12.04m.
Basically if you do that 100 times then it's effectively a 7m average increase on the basic fee, or a 240% return. Obviously this is the simple way of looking at it, for a demonstration. There's other things like risk of him being injured and his insurance payout, or what if they get in the prem, what would he and the prem payout be worth.