For me, the key was to just keep pulling cards.
You'll get **** 99% of the time, and you'll hate everything about life and FIFA because of it, but then one day you'll pull something truly awesome (In my case, an Eden Hazard that sold for 201,000 coins) and it will be a gamechanger. You'll have enough in that moment to completely transform your team into a damn formidable side.
It just sucks that it takes like 10 games to earn enough for a Premium Gold Pack (Don't bother with the regular Gold Pack). Unless you've got some spare real money you feel like throwing at it, which I did on occasion and is probably what sped this process up.
I started a month ago. This was my team after Night 1 of playing with it:
This is my team now:
So, yeah, just keep pulling cards and hope for some luck along the way.