Saw a pretty neat idea so decided to try it. Went in the pre game editor and gave transfer embargoes until 2100 to every team in the top 4 leagues in England, top 2 in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, top league in Portugal, Russia, Netherlands and Scotland. Then also changed their owner type to be founder, non-vote member (whatever it was) and checked off "will remain fan owned" so that there wasn't any takeovers (take overs would remove the embargo I think). Basically froze all transfers from the main and even secondary leagues and their lower divisions.
Then just go on holiday indefinitely and see how it plays out.
Currently in June 2025. United finished runners up in the prem twice and 3rd place twice, never won. CL runner up once, FA cup winner once and Europa league winner once. We're the nearly men. Greenwood and Bruno Fernandes put up some crazy stats though. Bruno seems to average like 15 goals and 30 assists a season in all comps. Liverpool won 4 of the 6 CL's (3 in a row right now), Barca and Madrid the other 2. The leagues went to City 3 times, Liverpool twice and Chelsea once.
Kind of want to just push it on holiday for a while, like 2040 or 2050, enough to bleed out the effects of transfer power right now, shift the power across Europe to be more natural through youth development, and then take over and play from there. Could see teams like Ajax, Celtic, Benfica etc turn into much bigger forces I'd imagine.
Pretty easy to set it up yourself if you're interested. In the pre game editor you can mass change teams, I just searched for the competition, went in and under teams selected them all and clicked edit to then edit the entire league at once. So just repeated the process for whatever league I wanted.