I agree and disagree on this one.
The match engine kinda does its own thing at times, and that can be frustrating. I create tactics as well and test them myself, and while I feel like you can see a difference, it's true that the match engine does it's own thing and makes everything less distinct than it should be. Also, lots of approaches just don't work well, for me not at last.
(On that note: Why do we have "Get further forward" as instruction but not "stay back" or "drop back" (while attacking)? Yes, we do have "Hold position", but that's a different thing, really.)
I disagree on the part with wide players loving to shoot from crazy places. This was a huge, huge issue for me in the beta and the early stages of the game, but I feel like it doesn't really happen anymore. Might have to do with the fact that I usually set my wide players to "Shoot less often", but I feel like this was fixed very well with the ME update.
Generally, I use "Shoot less often" A LOT. Even on my strikers. I feel like this causes them to not pepper the goal every time the opportunity arises but rather evaluate whether this is actually a good opportunity to go for goal or whether there is a pass. The effect is less than anticipated and it basically doesn't show in their scoring numbers, but I feel like it's slightly beneficial to a lot of my tactics.