Scourge of the Grey players? (is it still an issue in FM09?)

As most LLM managers will know, non-league teams are generally filled to the brim with grey players. These players are meant to reflect the anticipated skill level of players at the club, and should ideally produce something similar for their results. Although in FM08 this wasn't the case. In fact I, like many others, feared playing non-league teams due to the god-like abilities of the grey players. One would expect them to be whipping boys, but in most cases they would destroy teams in the lower leagues.

There were many reasons for this. One being their perfect conditions leading into each game, as they have no morale to worry about, and generally had great physical conditions. For myself I found this to be game breaking whilst managing lower league teams, but it also becomes game breaking if you try to manage a smaller countries national team. You would have a full blown squad of Bhutan players, and would come up against a Tibetan team of grey players, and get completely schooled by them, due to their perfect conditions.

Not only was it frustrating due to the constant failure of games that should be walks in the park, but due to the reputation-based simulation for AI vs AI games, the non-league team in such fixtures normally lost. So in a sense their uncanny dominance was a double-edged sword in FM08.

Now for FM09! I haven't personally had enough time to test it out for myself, but I'm wondering... have any of you noticed any similar occurrences with grey player teams in FM09? Has there been any comments on the issue from SI since it was raised during the early stages of FM08's release?

Again, this is an issue that will most likely only be experienced by LLM managers or people who undertake Dafuge's, or Gundo's, challenge, but I think it effects enough people for it to become a fairly large annoyance.

Nothing hurts more than managing a Blue Square North team and being dumped out of all the cups by unplayable teams packed full of dirt imaginary players.

This was identified as a problem in 08 and was mostly fixed (still a bit too good for my tastes) in patches so I would assume its been addressed in 09.

I have yet to play any grey teams in FM09 Demo . But I hope the issue has been addresed at is was a major problem in 08. IMO.