Long term view on building squad (scouts or power train from market?)

I'm curious as to which would be better long term in terms of costs and ability to win the league each year, in terms of building your squad.

This year I bought about 4 scout players, and a few of them reached 7*, but this is expensive and I don't think they learn as fast. It did help me win a very competitive league tho, it went down to the last few games.

The other option would be to buy players off the market and maybe they will learn faster? Problems here are competing with others to buy them (This is a big problem on my server, lots of people fighting over a limited selection of players on market).

Also, which players are best to buy if you want to power train them? I know young is best, but what star quality should they start at? It costs about the same tokens to buy 50 green boosters as a scout player, so which is best long term? Are purchased scouts good for power training? I don't want to spend lots on the game, but I'm not afraid to buy some tokens.

Cheers!

I'm testing out an 18 year old 5* vs 22 year old 6* next season to see what is most effective for your tokens for Power Training.

In a few days time we will know the results.

Scouters if they are close to 7 stars and young (22-24) of course a 18 years old can catch a 25+ years old scouter (in 2 seasons).

Buy players from the market until you cannot improve your squad any further from the market (full 5* squad), and then power train. Go for young and high valued players.