I almost let the heading off the hook* because the two things that annoy me more are firstly, as you allude to above, the obsession with pace in this. All the high quality cards are just identikit supermen with a different face drawn on. I don't want an Ibrahimovic with 94 fucking pace or whatever it is, I want him to be strolling about bossing things with technique. I don't want my best striker at this point to be some cunt called Florian Niederlechner who is such a non-entity that his Wikipedia page includes a bit about him sharing a flat with his mate because he presumably had one man of the match performance against FC Pilsner in the last six months so they boosted his stats including, you guessed it, fucking pace. What, he had borrowed Sonic's shoes that week and he was suddenly faster? Did they get Bolt in as a ringer and nobody noticed?

Secondly: Inconsistency. At least I know crossing and heading is almost always shit and a waste of time. Every failure to successfully do it basically goes the same way. But don't, game, pick and choose when you are and aren't going to do exactly what I've input on my controller. If I trundle a pass three yards to the nearest opponent because I mispress or something, fine, I'll hold my hands up to that. But if I hold the button down to hoof it into the space ahead of my speed demon don't flip a fucking virtual coin and go "lol not today mate" and also trundle a pass three yards to the nearest opponent. Either always take a laissez-faire attitude to the buttons I've pressed and put your own mong-brained spin on it or never do it and let me live and die solely by what I've pressed. I shouldn't be holding a button down and going "Huh, I wonder what it'll do this time?" There's enough of that crap when opening one of your fucking FUT packs to be greeted with a duplicate a silver Sven Das Sheissekeeper card from the German third division, don't make me deal with your capricious bullshit when I'm trying to kick the football.

* As much as one can forgive a billion dollar development company failing to implement a basic feature that they've managed to nail no bother previously in their multi-decade franchise.