Set the system date to April 1st and advance the in-game date also to April 1st. You will get a message stating your board is willing to offer you £500 million in transfer funds and a new season. Accept it to find out it is a joke by the game's developers.
Easy money
Use the following trick to make money as well as develop players. First, put a player on the Transfer List that CPU's teams are interested in. When they make an offer, reduce it to £0, then put a buy back clause of £1,000. Scroll down and enter a clause "After League Appearance - 1" then increase that to the amount that they offered. Once the player makes his debut for the team, you will get the money and can then buy him back for £1,000. Note: This is especially useful for youth players, as it allows you to earn money from them while being able to get them when they develop for almost nothing and also saves the wages.
Easy wins
Create a custom player and add them to your opponents team. Select "Quick Tactics". Set all of your opponent's players to attack. Place an arrow from the goalkeeper to the striker. You should win easily.
Real players
Due to licensing some National Teams don't have proper players (Germany for example)
To get rid of this go to "C:/Program Files/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2008/data/db/800/lnc/all" once there copy the file entitled "fake.lnc" (You may wish to put it in a safe place as backup if needed) then delete the file "fake.lnc" and when you start a new game the countries effected will have the proper squad.
All this file does it put a "mask" on the national teams effected and once you remove it will get rid of the mask.