good advice and a really well written an informative guide. Thanks 4oJ.

Question: if you were to do this in a hurry with power training and use tokens, do you have any idea how many it would take to get to 9 stars if you had a high 6-start player to start with?

Using the "Personal Trainer" with 1500 tokens is just crazy. I can't see myself sinking somewhere around US $150 into a single player.