I'm the opposite, I nearly always have a full 18 at the very least. This means less rests used when playing multiple competitions at once, and I find that players perform better if they are rested for a game occasionally. This also gives me good flexibility for managing my team. I don't usually run into issues with tokens, as the majority of my players I get off auction for 5 tokens or less, and with my Association at Silver 1, it's starting to pay for itself. Plus, it's very helpful for associations loans.

Sure, I sacrifice a bit in each player's individual quality. But there's a lot more than just quality that goes into the algorithm, and it allows me to have full managerial flexibility, so I like having enough for almost an entire second 11.