The bottom line is this, train the team to keep it at its max with the least expense possible, and then just hope that the computer likes you and favors you, One thing you can do is figure out what mentality the computer likes your team to play. For example, in some seasons it reacts negatively to normal or defensive and reacts well to attacking mentality. In some seasons I used attacking and did not do well while I would do very well with normal. Never did well with defensive or hard defending ever, even against stronger teams.