To be clear, this remains a great game, and I probably played 100 hours. The mechanics remain tight and the game play's as entertaining as ever. But I've grown frustrated by a few recurring issues. First, there is always one method of attack that is slightly overpowered. This year, it felt like the rapid counterattack and a central throughball were a sure fire tactic that led to regular one on ones with the keeper. It's a bit too easy and diminished the tactical variation one would otherwise hope to employ. Exacerbating this fact was the inaccuracy of crosses and difficulty of nailing headers in this year's game (last year in comparison the header was the cheat code). Second, the generated youth players are still an issue for long term career players. It remains impossible to find a good player with physical stats (speed, acceleration) that remotely match their physical attributes. I played through about 10 seasons but got one player out of my academy who ended up with 80+ speed and acceleration, yet dozens of players who could grow to 84-87 (a very high level that should be harder to attain) just on technical attributes. It's an annoying problem that has never been resolved. I'm not opposed to making it very hard to find a speedy, superstar player (those come along so rarely in real life), but the current game makes it too easy to grow technically minded midfielders and powerful defenders. It makes it seem as if a guy like Raheem Sterling is a once in a lifetime player but guys like Mezut Ozil, Santi Cazorla, Xavi, etc., just grow on trees and are a dime a dozen. In reality there are very few of those guys in the world too, so it's puzzling the way the game is balanced (or unbalanced) in this regard.
