Team design for FA Tournament

Being that, in FA we face similar quality teams, is there a best way to design our teams. Skewed towards defense, balanced, or skewed towards offense?

My team had problems this weekend, and i'm trying to pinpoint what the caused the poor performance. I drew 2-2 and lost 2-3 in the semi's. For the finals, I lost 1-3 and 1-2. I'm a bit fuming about the results, because the results seem really illogical to me.

For semi's quality was even, with me having a slight edge, of 110.1% to 109.4%. For the Finals my advantage was 112.5% to 103.3%. Opponent's being stacked wasn't the cause either, since my opponent didn't attend in semi's. Assuming a triple stack, that's 22%, which would be offset by me activating my +14%(21%) since he didn't attend. Plus, in the finals I had a +18% defense for the 2nd leg.

I haven't had much turnover on my roster either, as several of my starters have been starters for 3+ seasons.

Starters by season

Last 3 seasons = 6 players (Association record = 15-0-1)
Last 2 season = 8 players (Association record = 11-5-0(11-3-0 when not loaning out 8 starters))
Last season = 10 players (Association record = 10-2-4(10-0-4 when not loaning out 8 starters))
This season = (Association record = 0-3-1)

So, as i've pointed out, its basically the same team each season. My starters lost as many games this weekend as the last three seasons combined, and i'm at a loss for why because these players have been performing so well the last few seasons. Fortunately, the rest of the boys pulled through, so we still got 1st. But if my problems aren't corrected, it'll cost us in the future (unless my opponent was stacked, which they would be foolish to do since we have 6 actives @ 40% training bonuses; well not always but usually).

Has the game engine changed? My quality is skewed towards offense currently with 140%, 129% and 127% players, but a 113% team average, so is that leaving the defense very vulnerable? But with a 10% advantage and my opponent have a 5* defense, my defense shouldn't have conceded 5 goals as well. Especially since last season my GK, between the league (26 games) and CL (12.5 games) conceded a combined 3 goals, yet conceded 10 in associations today. What can account for such a large dropoff in performance?

Is it just a bizarre result?

I apologize for the mini-vent, I'm just trying to figure out what went wrong, so I can fix it for next weekend (assuming the problem in on my end). I understand having a couple bad games, but 4 in a row! Is it just bad luck with the RNG? Have others experienced bizarre results this season?

Thanks,