Eh, where are all the 4*'s? (and a training question)

I havent really been paying much attention the last couple, errr, few months ... But this season I decided to get a few hundred tokens and I would power train some players for next season. But I'm going on and the majority of the 18 and 19 YO are threes with a couple barely 4.

I remember there being quite a few 4's when I was buying and selling a bit a few months ago, did something change?

Also are you better to just save all the training points until you are ready to use them? I have a feeling Im answering this one myself, but when I took one player from 4* to 5* he dropped down from 138 to 99 another I just added a few points and his training stats dropped down.

his training stats dropped because he had enough skill points for the next star. It doesn't matter if you add them or not, they will still slow down when you hit the next star. Which is why if you are training for another role or SA, do that first and add those points right away

Thanks for that Slow.