Hey,
It isn’t complicate at all but that’s how the game works and when you understand how it works then everything becomes much more enjoyable because if you understand how it works then you always build correct expectation and due to that they are always met which mean you never get frustrated.
Let’s take Man City at the beginning of the 1st season, the team predicted to finish 1st and that prediction didn’t come from nowhere, it’s based on the average CA of its players.
CA = amount of point that a player has to spend on his attributes.
As you can see at the screenshot below the average CA of Man City’s players is about “150” and the average CA of the starting eleven is about “160”
Now, let’s take Hull City that team is predicted to finish 20th(the last pace) and that prediction is based on the average CA of its players
As you can see at the screenshot below the average CA of Hull’s players is about “129” and the average CA of the starting eleven is about “133”
So you always can check the CA of your players and approximately say where your team stand; for example, if it’s about 140 then you somewhere in the middle of the table; and if you want to have the strongest team in EPL then the average CA of your players should be higher than 150 and the CA of your starting eleven should be higher than 160.
It isn't necessary using 3rd party programs to find out the strength of your team and you can do that without using any 3rd party programs just by looking at the season preview table before the 1st match of the season because at that moment the teams in the table are sorted by their average CA and their prediction is based on the average CA.
But as I said you should look at this table before the 1st match of the season because only then this table is based purely on the average CA and during the season the prediction is also affect by current positions of the teams.
Also, I want to add that even that CA gives very clear understanding about quality of players but no need overestimate it because CA is just total amount of points that a player has to spend on his attributes but it isn’t less important how these points are spent and the way these points are spent determines the efficiency of this player for your tactic.