Hi!. Yes you should play some friendlies with different formations/tactics, use arrows either attacking or defending .
Also are you motivating your team in terms of morale or bonuses? Are your players health higher than 80% before the match starts?
In my experience a DML-ML would perform better AS DML and ML-AML as ML , same on the other flank.
The really good ones and hard to find are AML-AMC and AMR-AMC those would perform better as AML and AMR due to their attacking positions. Have you noticed that when you auto assign points to a AML-AMC most of the times it goes to attack due to the nature of his native position.
I hope it helps . Cheers