i guess the timewasting thing just adds to the difficulty and realism, havent seen it myself, only played a few exhibitions on 6* but i shall start an ml on it soon
as for the fouls thing i find the refs in this game a joke. its true that in previous versions we could hammer the tackle button at any time and not cause a foul but this is not what im on about. sometimes the refs give free kicks when there isnt even contact (im not talking about near misses that the game could count as contact - there could be 2 feet between the players and the ref awards a free kick for some weird reason).
the refs are also insanely biased towards the cpu at any level. you can be clean through on goal and they clip your heels and the cpu player doesn't even get booked, just concedes the free kick. other times you can beat a man and play the ball past him, and just as you go past him the cpu defender blatantly either body checks you or trips you up with no attempt to play the ball and the ref doesn't even give a free kick.
yet if the player does this the referee is quick to give a free kick and most of the time punish with a yellow or even red card (although ive never been straight red carded, that was my dad

)