Not all the time, there is this player that occasionally jumps into my tournaments: his players aren't usually bellow 8*. And so in the cup matches, I didn't take it serious because of him so I quickly droped out of the race, guess what happened? ... a weaker team knocked him out and the Cup was open to rest managers... I was like: If only I knew...
he is LV5 so at those levels you could have some tactical advantage - specially if you face him in a single match - the final.