Great message! I think this sums up what a lot of new managers are feeling/thinking so you are not on your own.
Im sure others have thread links, manual links etc at their fingertips which will help you. But in the mean time:
Arena - great long term investment so why not start now? (cant go wrong - research the top teams arenas to get a feel of the maximums and aim for that in the long run)
dont worry if you are not filling it out. start of the season everyones attendance is low until the fans get all excited again.
Certainly toy with prices. Tweak up and down by 5% or 10%, but you can only do this 2 or 3 times a season (you can set them any time but notice the deadline for when they take effect)
Bleachers are more volatile attendance/closely linked to performance week to week. Volatility decreases up to luxury boxes where your richer fans sit (and they dont care as much whether you win or lose each week, they are just there to show off and drink wine).
Training - theres lots of info on this. Try
(174881.1) and explore. (Thanks USA community+congrats on U21 achievement!) Either train 3 guys "one position" as far as you can, or 5 or 6 guys "two position" as far as you can. THere are pros and cons to each. I have always trained 3 guys one position, and for u21 and NT this is the better way to get quicker progression. However, training twice as many players at 2/3 or 3/4 of the speed of one position must be tempting to new managers! I tend to train and worry about results second, but it is important to strike a balance here. As for who to train, if you are tight for money, you can add value fairly quickly to training a young player (21 or younger) with star potential, provided they are the right height for your training regime. NExt season you can look at better players/higher potential if you save some money. Get a level 4 coach or aim for one. Get a balance between transfer sum and weekly wage. replace every couple seasons. Training is fun, earns you money and wins you games down the line!
Gameshape - the principle is easy - play each of your players 4 to 6 quarters a week. No more, no less. The closer to 6 quarters the better. However, if you creep over 72 minutes then GS bonus turns to penalty quickly. Each level of GS is like an extra layer or two of skills - dont underestimate its importance! You should experiment with lineups/tactics to improve how often you achieve this. When you have an NT player quite often a coach will select from his team on the basis of great GS. There has just been a GS reset which is why everyone has the same GS. Every Friday it updates the same time as training. GS wanders up and down according to playing time over the last few weeks (more weighted to the last weeks minutes) and a random element. VERY IMPORTANT. Did i say that already?
Enthusiasm - Again very important tactical decision each game. Worth working out what your opponents do before you decide what to do. If you think you will lose for sure or win for sure, then you could build your enthusiasm by taking it easy (TIE) accepting the win/loss, and perhaps win the next game with the extra enthusiasm your team has. Playing a normal/TIE once enthusiasm gets to 9 or 10 is probably as effective as crunch time (CT)/normal at enthusiasm 5. Use CT only occasionally as playing TIE or normal with enthusiasm lower than 5 doesnt give good results! Enthusiasm updates after every game except scrimmages. It tends to drop or increase to 5 over time. To maintain a high enthusiasm you need to keep playing TIE. This is also very important and can show in final league standings/playoff winners especially in lower leages where other managers do not manage enthusiasm.
Bot clean ups - at the end of every season the computer controlled teams get demoted all the way down, and then the best human controlled teams get autopromoted up to replace them.
hope this helps!