so i've swallowed my foolish pride and continued the game, half a season down, here's how things stand:
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it's going pretty well actually, can't really complain so far in terms of results. I like the style of our play but we haven't found that reliable consistency I'd like to see; we dominate most matches but sometimes it seems we just keep the ball for possession's sake and do nothing with it, hence a few goalless draws and losses I would have liked to avoid, I hope that'll improve with time. still, the flow of our game, when it's "on" is really good, seen some pretty nice action goals coming from beautiful build-up play.
I keep juggling the attacking trio because I have more than twice the amount of quality players who could do an equally good job in multiple positions, but so far none of them really has. I guess it would make more sense to pick the best performing ones and stick to them but I just love most of them too much and I'd like to see all of them succeed
oh well, that's a pretty nice "problem" to have. but here's the 11 that I think have been the most consistent lately:
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interestingly 19 year old Jordon Ibe is my most solid IF so far, whereas I can't really get constant good performances out of the likes of Firmino, Coutinho or Lallana, though Lallana usually plays as the attacking CM but even there the Welsh Pirlo ousts him most of the time. the striker, regardless of who it is at the time, tends to become an innocent bystander in some games, and even when the whole attacking trio gets good ratings, goals sometime lack, but that's something I've mentioned before and I'm pretty sure it's gonna get better, especially if I stop rotating so much
oh well it's becoming a wall of text for just half a season. so anyway, I like this one so far very much, glad that I kept with it. it does indeed seem to deliver what it promises: solid play most of the time, maybe less deadly than some others but nonetheless entertaining and successful, and perhaps closer to "reality" if you can say something like that in FM. big ups.