Can't figure out why I'm losing so much to weaker teams

So I'm on level 4 now, last season I won all 3 competitions because I figured out it's better to train players rather than buy old players every season.
I think I'm doing most of the thins I should be doing to win.
My team is 93% right now (and getting better as I train players), I have enough players with special abilities and multiple positions to be able to switch formations according to my opponents team before every match.
7 players out of my team are young players that have been trained so they have really high skills(the ones that matter). Some of them are academy, some of them(2) are 18yo fast trainers that I bought looking at the value/salary.
I do train every day to get 10% bonuses. I watch the games to give the bonuses. As I said I try to use counter formations and tactics. And this season I'm on 7th place in the league, already out of the cup and on the way out of CL. I've lost to teams with 10-15% less than mine.
I can't figure out why this is happening and what to do. I think I'm just gonna give up and use this season to train my players and prepare for the next one..
Can anyone help with some tips?

Welcome to the real world of TE after the first few honeymoon seasons. :o

From what you have written, it is fair to suggest you have learned the basics with hard lessons like the rest of us, so will skip FT and power-training as it seems you have some idea about it. Having tougher league means you may have been drawn with lots of competition, so will explain a bit of what you could do in draws for easier opponents and also team setup and tactics for expectedly difficult ones in finals. Will starts with ads first as it is very important in improving best players.

Within a 24-hour period, there would be 25 ads for free greens and 15 ads for the rest of packs.
Should always take all 25 greens everyday.
And reserve 1-2 packs’ ads for max team bonus training.
The rest of 13-14 packs’ ad should be distributed to improve conditions of 3-4 key players (exhaustive training onto 1-2 players will negatively impact performance) after daily focused extra training of particular skills to win matches. Typically, finishing or speed onto ST/AMs, Reflexes or Rushing out for GK, Passing/Crossing for CK-taker, etc. Your favoured style of play will determine which skills you want to spend those 13-14 daily non-savable packs onto.

If trophy counts, funds accumulation and pack savings are more important to you in the short run, then you may consider draw manipulation for a couple of seasons. Draw manipulation typically means a manager tries to end the season with a fairly low AvQ, or team quality, of the 14-best highest-% players of the squad to get easier draws in all competitions for next season. A minimum of 14 is needed, or else the system will add 31yo+ 40%+ players in the new season and negatively impact our draws.

Eg. If a manager keeps 5x 18-21yo 120% players, 9x 45% reserve multi-position players (40% is the most ideal, though in reality all on 40% is impossible; multi-positions like AML/ML/DL will keep team bonus maxed without costing key players’ conditions) and sell the rest of the squad before end of season, and then say look to promote 3 free 18yo youths @78%, 66% & 58% from academy (to both ensure key positions like DC & MC have back-ups at start of season to avoid hugely-expensive Ts buys at start of season and also them being free to allow funds saved from players sold from last season could be used for new players purchase), then next season’s opponents’ quality would be around:

Opponents’ quality = {[(5x 120% + 6x 45%) - (5+6) x 20%] + 78% + 66% + 58%}/14 = 60.85%
It means that draws of opponents for next season would be around 40% - 80% (1* +/-).

Level 4-5 managers usually would have saved up enough funds to buy squad players of 80%+ at least 22-24yos. If funds and Ts allow, it is a lot better to get 20-21yo 75%+ though for both the improvement in-season (~14-17%, depending on value/salary ratio and if training on the lowest whites) and also potential max 85-90% of player value in auction if end-of-season quality is 90%+. Our 5 key players would start the season at 100% (2* advantage), 3 18yo youths can match opponents at start (so at least can be back-up if better squad players are bought), and so we need to buy at least 6x players for 3 good subs or better with 10x players for a very flexible 7-sub bench to save greens while fighting for all 4 trophies, association matches as well as seasonal competitions. Adding at least a top 18yo FT per season would be ideal, as it ensures performance and also save time, effort and T resources to buy seasonal squad players too.

Generally, buying 1* above opponent’s quality means we should win most matches comfortably with best players at least 2* better and the rest about 1* better. Back-ups, such as youths, can be rotated for weaker opponents whenever possible to save greens. Sales of those 18yo youths, who should be 90%+, 80%+ & 70%+, by end of season would be sufficient to at least buy an extra 21yo 80%+ players for the following season. Winning matches with 1* advantage should not be too difficult, and so saving blues and reds should become a lot easier as long as we attend matches and make subs (for greens). 5+ goals’ wins for 3 blues are very possible when we manage to attack the right part of the field (special sponsor tasks cost a lot of blues).

Tactics-wise, we all should have both a favoured formation of attacking (win with advantage of whole team) and counter-attacking (minimise goals conceded and win via taking chances by our key players when team quality is equal or at a slight disadvantage of up to 1*). A few possible change of formation to along with focus passing variation has to be implanted within the first-11 to allow non-performances of own players and super defensive efforts of opponents. I will show my team setup as an example for reference (a new level-2 club, so is still limited by funds and can only afford 5 subs for now but still very manageable):

Attachment 136104
Attachment 136105

Aggressive formations to win with team advantage:
3-4-3W to overload formations without 3-corresponding flanks’ opponents
Attachment 136106

3-4-3AM-1 to overload opponent with 1 DMC with too many strong defenders
Attachment 136107

3-1-3-3W. Similar with 3-4-3W, though DMC instead of MC to counter opponents with AMC
Attachment 136108

3-3-1-2W-1. Typically against opponents who plays an ultra-attacking 4-1DMC-3AM-2 without MC
Attachment 136109

3-4-3. Wide AMs play as STs, with full-backs push up and closer all to central to attack formations with too many wide-players
Attachment 136110

These basic formation changes possible within first-team line-up should be enough to break down opponents of 1* worse when facing situations where we need to change something in-game after 35+ minutes when goals should have been scored and yet we would like to keep substitutes to be used as a last resort around 60th minute when everything else isn’t working.

Defensive formations such as 4-5v-1 (flanks) 4-1-4-1 (middle or flanks), 4-1-3-1-1 (middle), 4-1-3-2AM (middle), 4-1-3-2AML/R+C (one flank) are quite self-explanatory to be used for counter-attacking opponents of 5% to even 30% better. Not much variation for these and so it would be resource-efficient to at least train up both a very strong DC/DMC and MC/DMC if we intend to keep winning enough for 100T with platinum associations.