Firstly, I'm a non-spender. I have never bought tokens, green packs, etc. My post was aimed at similar players, not at people who spend to buy scouts, train SA, new positions, power train, etc. I don't have the money or time for that. Until this season, I have barely watched videos because it just wasn't worth my time for green packs and there were so few for tokens. Fortunately, this season I have found where all the token videos for my country were hiding so I finally have amassed some tokens and might buy my first ever scout, negotiation, etc next season.

As to the rationale of my dedicating greens to older 7*... for starters it's difficult to find/get 18yo high 5* FT, especially at the start of the season (they are in demand!). In the last ten seasons or so, I have only been able to identify and win the auction for two such players that have performed well (often these players stink early in their careers. some come good, some don't). no point wasting my few resources on them. i save them for the rare mix of young, FT, performers. So I buy as best I can at the start of the season.

My team is always 6* by mid-season, however it is rare that any of my team will reach 7* by the end of the season. therefore at the beginning of the new season it is usually better to replace most of the squad with new players obtained from the transfer market who are as close to 99% as possible, young, have good stats, SA if i'm lucky, etc.

I currently only have 3 players who have played over 100 games (despite going deep in CL and cup every year) - the two FT I mentioned in my original post and one non-FT who is a good performer who (sadly) will probably be a reserve next year because he's only 104% now and will be 23 next year so he'll be a long way behind the rest of the team in quality and won't train well enough to keep up.

Given the above, to me it is better to use greens on a 25yo 7* than a young 5* because for my squad the 25yo 7* will still be good enough to be in my team in a couple of seasons whereas the young 5* will almost certainly not. Plus, the 25yo 7* is a proven performer (or they wouldn't be there) and the young 5* is an unknown. Therefore, notwithstanding that the individual gain for each green is greater on the young 5*, I would rather use it on the 25yo 7* as the long term benefit is greater.

Please note the question posed that I was responding to did not state the three young 5* were FT, it just said young 5* (plus 5* could mean anywhere from 80 to 99%). Further, I would not have a 25yo in my team at all unless they were a high quality FT, otherwise it would have been impossible to keep up and still be in the team by the time they were 25. I can tell you from first hand experience that 25yo FT, even at 6/7* still train OK. It was only at 26, moreso 27, that I noticed the training starting to drop off significantly (not that I looked at or kept any data, just casual observation). At 22 to 24, he trained fine and got up to 8*.

To summarise (a very long post sorry), I full well acknowledge training older players is "inefficient", that doesn't mean it's not more beneficial than training a younger player. My goal is to train whoever is going to be in my team the longest from then on, sometimes that will be an older player. Obviously, ideally it would be a young FT (which is what I'm currently doing), but it wasn't for a number of seasons prior.