It had a whole lot to do with that manager buying an entire 22 man team of scouts to start the season. I play with all nordgens. start each season about 6* and by seasons end I have a starting 11 of 7-8*s
At the group stage his scouts at upper 6* were a bit better than mine and he won two 1 goal matches there.
By the time the final came he still had basically the same exact players, they train very slow. I had surpassed him by quite a bit. It was still a solid match but I won. Not much mystery there.
As for the first reply I am not a 35T manager but not a heavy token buyer either. I spent about $30 this season. I spend a ton of time doing all I can to farm packs and tokens. It is hard to do in the US but I do okay, just takes a lot of time. This season was very hard due to facebook videos vanishing so I felt a lot more satisfaction still winning the treble.
That guy who beat me twice in the CL btw owns 2 of the 3 losses I have sustained combined over 3 seasons. 126-14-3 combined with 653 GF to 75GA. As you can see this season I finished 5 goals shy of a full 10/1 scoring ratio (265GF 27GA).
As a quick side note. I have done all this without ever having a player reach 8*s. Not one time for even a day. This past season my highest skill player ended at 42Q, not even 7.5* and produced 94 goals (74G 20A)