enigmatic

More from short and fewer from long through balls...

Also, there are loads of football management simulations, it's just that most of the others are pretty basic and not that good....

I quite like bog standard fullbacks as IWBs, preferably with a bit of passing ability. As far as I'm concerned, their role when they move into the middle of the pitch is to give the ball to players with more talent and win it back quickly if it's lost

tbh I like it the other way, parking the IWBs in midfield so the midfield with actual attacking talent can play more aggressively. You can play your DM further forward that way too This approach works almost absurdly well on FM19...

442 is fine in the current ME, unless you're playing against a much better team in which case having an extra midfielder might be helpful. Whilst you say your problem is you're conceding too much, a quick look at this formation suggests you're not going to create enough chances to outscore them, which might be a bigger issue because you're unlikely to keep clean sheets every game in a high tempo 442, especially not with those sides. My guess is that at lower levels you score a lot of goals through simple balls to the advanced forward, or your wingers getting lots of space out wide and their defenders not dealing with crosses properly and they couldn't win the ball back easily from those types of attacks or break down your structured shape, and none of those apply in the Premier League. Also, now you're in the Premier League, your players should be fit and quick enough to counter press and press for 90 mins... You basically only have two strikers making runs into the penalty area [and whilst an AF/DLF pairing is complete logical I'm not sure the DLF is that effective in the current match engine], your wingers stay wide, your centre mids stay back and you've also instructed them not to counter or leave their positions. It's pretty predictable to defend against. I'd want one of your wide players cutting inside and one of your midfielders getting forward and lose the hold shape. If you're worried about being outnumbered in midfield, invert one or both of the fullbacks.

A lower line of engagement achieves a shape that's more difficult to pass through at the expense of letting the opposition have a lot of easy possession in their own half. The opposition will tend to be much happier wasting time in their own half when you're expected to beat them. Higher lines of engagement generally work pretty well in FM too. Don't forget you can change it during the match though: if the opposition's dominating possession even though you're better than them you probably need to press them higher and earlier, and if you've scored first you can quite happily let them have the ball and fail to pass through you.

I'm looking at the BBC website and seeing the headline 'Zlatan did not create Malmo, Malmo created Zlatan', why the striker's statue 'must be moved' and thinking, 'wow, this thread escalated quickly'

You're probably the only FM player that can see the words 'golden generation' in your youth intake message and think 'I sure did a good job when they were in the U10s'

Man Utd are exceptionally good at bringing through youth talent that's good enough to play in the Premier League, but it's pretty rare for them to bring through a player with the potential of Rashford, which is how good a player at United has to be to be [accurately] rated 4*. If you're managing United and you get a Cleverley and a Drinkwater instead of a Rashford, they can probably do a job for you in the future but your HOYD will probably say it's a poor intake and not rate anyone higher than 3*

FM does have the ability to throw the best curve balls at you when you're least expecting it. Accepting actual money from overseas clubs for a soon-to-be 33 year old with 10 pace and six months left on his contract would normally be a no-brainer in FM, but Benat is my club captain and playing well in a title race we're currently on top of. And the Garcias are both currently out injured and so it'd leave me with Unai Lopez, Vesga and young Oroz plus San Jose who's the player I was really hoping to offload this window... Am currently leaning towards waiting until summer when I might have more options than overpaying for Pardo.

AI vs AI is non-stop trying to score from corners too. Those side won't do infamous marking bug exploits, but the AI simply isn't designed to do what real sides often do and use corners as a way of wasting time or at least keeping hold of the ball without bothering to throw defenders forward when they're already leading

One of the main things is the good old fashioned "it's your tactics". Or more precisely, it's the fact that tactics are set up to ensure that people always throw their defenders forward and whip the ball into the middle, and it's not really set up to play short, conservative ball-retaining corners sides often do when they've got a lead never mind the timewaste corners real sides often do late in a game they're defending a one goal lead in. So not only do you get more corners, but you're also trying to convert all of them which real teams [conversion rate ~3%] don't...

Likes to round keeper could be very useful given the dubious finishing of one-on-ones in the current ME.

He hoofed the ball three times to your fastest winger and once to your striker. In between he appears to have mostly played it safe and sensible to your regista. There's not a massive difference in passing abilities between your two fullbacks [Solly has lower vision but better anticipation and decisions] anyway, but fundamentally three or four hoofs is not how you judge who is the better creator passer overall.