I started BAL a few days ago, now I'm nearly halfway through my second season. Top player (I'm thinking about switching to professional though given the clues about the AI by someone around page 2 I guess) AMF.
After a well played scouting match I got a rating of 6.5 (well, no goals/assist but a few intercepts and good passes), signed for Valladolid in Spanish League (I've decided not to go for big clubs too early, I'm still dreaming of becoming a star in a lower club and then being picked up by a powerful team, just sounds realistic to me given that I do not start off as a talent). During 8 training games (last one being in the A-team) I scored 2 and laid on another 2 goals, started getting subbed in during league matches, where I was able to score 5 and assist another 2 during the rest of the season. Feels like a 17-year-old trying to get a grasp of professional football, I guess. As I've said before, I decided to stick to Valladolid for some time and now I'm playing two games from the beginning in every three matches. No goals or assists so far in the 2nd season though, it's gotten kind of hard lately, the AI just doesn't seem to play as well as it used to.
Now a few quick observations:
-I tend to use a whole lot of parentheses;
-Strengthen points are no longer the better source of stats, game experience seems to be around 60-70% of the growth now;
-AI seems to be way different from the previous release's, but still annoying at times. One of the best examples is a game against Sevilla, where the defence line of my team was doing nothing but simply moving backwards, neither pressuring nor tackling any of three attackers of the opponent. Kanoute and co. were able to simply walk into my box eventually scoring an easy goal. Just for the record, team style settings are 60 in pressure and 65 in back line;
-Teammates still tend to walk straight into opposition players or carry the ball outside the field while not under pressure at all;
-Somebody said assists are easy to get in this year's release; I'd say they are hard for me, as an AMF playing nearly directly behind our target man I tend to play through the middle and most of through passes venture into the gloves of the GK, early crosses are a joke, but still the most annoying thing is that should any opponent touch the ball in even the slightest way, there'll be no assist at all.
There's more to rant about considering the AI, but those are the most annoying issues. I'll post some screens of my player when I finish the season.