Ted you're not on your own and your tactics and formations have nothing to do with it, so ignore all that rubbish the others are saying.
I am in the same situation as you if not worse, and its not the first time I have experienced it.
To stay playing with my friend I had to stay behind last season meaning I am now at least 10 points above everyone else this season and my players are all playing 4s and 5s and not just once some of their stats read 44454 or 46454 and that goes for probably seven out of the eleven players. I rotate them regularly and change formations to suit the opposition so its not that I play them too much or play the wrong formations.
I really feel that Nordeus does it to stop the league being a white wash or to penalise teams that may stay behind on purpose and then try and dominate the league next season.
This has happened before where I had to stay behind to stay in the same league as my friend.
I ended up having to sell my players, its hard to do that as you've built them up over time to become scouts and then you have to sell them and start all over again but I firmly believe this is what Nordeus wants you to do so that you don't have a team that is ludicrously better than anyone else in the league.
For those of you that will say "what if you buy all scouts then you would be ludicrously better" surely if you have enough tokens to buy a whole team of scouts then chances you have paid Nordeus for the tokens so they don't mind that or you have watched a million videos of the companies that pay Nordeus to have their videos on their site.
Sorry Ted all I can say is that you can try and stick it out which I will be trying this season or do what I did a few seasons ago and sell them and start again.