Where am I going wrong?

After 2 years, I restarted the game 2 weeks back and right now am at 103 OVR. I have exhausted all my training transfer tokens in order to transfer training to the icons. It takes me a lot of time and effort to rank up and train just 1 player. How are other F2P guys having their least least trained player till 20 whereas my best trained players are at 15. How are the F2P guys easily ranking players to red and orange ranks whereas I need to exhaust all my in-game currencies just to rank up a player to blue. What am I doing wrong? Are there a set of do's and dont's that I'm missing out on?