Yup, good observation. I've been fooling around with some possession tactics with three CM and either two AMC or AMR+AML. Despite having everything set up for build-up play through the middle (central CM set up as playmaker, focus passing, touchline shouts etc), my outer CMs always ended up playing one-twos with their respective fullbacks. Even when their playmaker pulled back to receive the ball, these two were sort of 'locked' together, ignoring their teammates everywhere around. Got no clue if this is working as intended or not, but it is rather irritating and annoying. Gets them players some neat pass counts, though.
High passing amounts, but when you look at Barca their passes have a meaning most of the time, and a big part of their passes are like 20 metres away from the goal. In FM, they wont make too many passes in that area, altough they could, but rather shoot a long shot. I really hope better defending by wingers in the next football manager.