Hahaha! You are right there. The way to build a competitive squad for a good record definitely takes more than an hour per day. What I mean is managers could spend a lot less time to aim at winning 70%+ of matches vs a lot more time and effort to win 80%+, or even 90%+, of matches. That difference takes a lot more in huge effort in building and maintaining a winning squad. For managers who want to spend less time, 30 mins per day can do already; for managers who want to win everything available, then even 3-4 hours could not be enough when running more than 1 account.
My main level-7 account has 9 core players, and they were all trained from 18yo 90%+ FT with initial 250-280 greens each at most (because of limited greens as low level). 4 of 9 were bought in season 1 and 2 (only limited managers have enough funds to bid more than 1-2 FTs per season) and the rest in seasons 3 & 4, so they do not cost too much time (when compared with the expected next generation of 18yo 40% to be bought in 3-4 seasons later). Matchdays 1-5 of new seasons would take some 8+ hours in seasons 3&4, and not much time is needed after the 5 FTs were bought and trained. Similar with 2nd level-4 account which already bought 9 core FT players as well, when both accounts simply do not have enough resources (greens, Ts & money) to fast-track to powertrain 40% FTs (so do not need to spend time onto searching for 40% FTs yet - if they do pop up during when looking for squad players and are also affordable then great; not even a concern when there is none either).
With daily training on whites improvement, maybe I had made way, way too many mistakes in my previous AAA account, all the drill sequences with averages are all learnt so vividly that it becomes kind of automatic that I know what the next one should be. Typically cost 3-4 mins each time to drain the extras conditions with individual drills, and 2-3 times per day on top of tpb maintenance. When we understand our own style of play, hence the formation and build & combination of players needed, then the drill sequence will also sorted by itself too.