the most important thing is the server. the server of my team is like yours. very few good players and minimum 25-30 tokens for them. so i only buy scouts (i can afford about 2 every season). the server of my wifes team has many 5 star players and you can have with less than 10 tokens very good players (today for 6 tokens i bought a 23 yo 5 star dl who after 1-2 days he will be scout). Anyway you can't change your server so a few tips are:
1)never try to buy a player if you have less than 10-15 tokens (my first season i lost about 30 tokens just by trying to buy players
having 2-3 tokens each time)
2) try early european hours if it's possible like 06:00 greenwich time. you have to compete mostly asian guys.
3) avoid biding for players the first 2-3 days at the begginig of the season.
4) bid for the player the last moment and pay attention to the other players who make bids. and if there is a bid from a rich scout team then quit. it's no shame loosing 1 token. but it's a shame to lose 10-20 and lose the player also