Managed to get Bilbao to 4th, which is pretty handy using (mostly) the Ashbringer variants. Last half of the season using 10 and 11 which got me up from hovering around 8th-10th.
There are a lot less big scores I'm finding and a lot of games that are decided by a single goal or two, or at...
What sort of output are you getting from the forward players?
I'm about 15 games in to a Bilbao save, they've not got a bad starting 11 (lacking in strikers, but should have enough to at least get something going) for Ashbringer and my top scorer is a centreback with 2. Seems to be very poor...