Swallow

Completed the Politano objectives earlier. Playing him as striker alongside Mertens and he's fantastic. Switching this formation to 5-2-1-2 in-game as I can't seem to find one that gets everyone on full chem. Barella is surprisingly fun to play with but I want to replace De Vrij and Strakosha (don't do the TOTW upgrade SBC...). May as well get Handanović as Donnarumma has gone up to within 8k of his cost.

@sbrandon111 Do you want to do any of the first owner icon swaps objectives? That's the only real reason to go untradeadable. I don't want to jinx it but I've had some pretty good luck from gold upgrades tonight, pulling Özil, Ziyech and Lloris.

That video reminds me that my training movement arrow has bugged out and won't appear no matter what settings I change or files I delete. It's incredibly frustrating.

Ha, I got him untradeadable too and chucked him into the La Liga player of the month SBC.

This TOTW upgrade SBC is awful. Becoming more and more evident that EA are preying on desperation and turning their customers into gamblers. All of today's SBCs are very poor value for money, and I can't see anyone who completes them being truly happy they have done so.

Re. World Class squad battles. Forget pressing the ball, just congest your defensive third and when you win the ball back either play very fast counter attacks or very patient build up with lots of L1 dribbling around the box until an opportunity opens up. The AI are weak against simple skill moves like ball rolls, drag backs, heel to heels and running fake shots. With all that said, I found the latest challenges far more difficult than the last batch. I won 5 out of 6 with my MLS and Eredivisie sides first time around, but have now lost more than I've won (3) with a much better Liga NOS team, even against the cherry picked bad teams. I think the latest patch has made a big difference to squad battle gameplay and the difficulty of these challenges.

I took untradeadable packs yesterday (gotta be due Messi right?) and pulled Pique. Sold Laporte for a decent profit and brought in Umtiti and Carvajal. The Toko-Ekambi SBC was a nice surprise, hopefully a bit of pace at ST will complement Lewandowski. Fekir, Morales and IF Muniain as subs. After getting my final first owner Premier League win to complete Guardiola I'm done with icon swaps now.

The Jamie Vardy squad building challenge is very good value too.

@Billy Brown I would get in any one of Brandt, Havertz or Coutinho (standard LW card) to replace Götze while you save up for Reus. IF Delaney is a better option than Goretzka at CDM but not sure he's worth the coins. You could try out the recent 84 rated informs of Kostic or Hazard for LM as you might prefer one of them to Coman. They are both less than 20k. Roussillon is a better option for LB and Lucas Hernandez is the best Bundesliga CB in my opinion.

First lot were easier. I managed 7. No way I'm earning 9 of this lot to get Keane so Pep will have to do for me. I wonder what the chances of base Gattuso in the next season are? That might solve your Politano dilemma @Timmo. He's 89 rated at CDM.

@Pants McSkillMcSkill I was aware of that from reading the FIFA Reddit but I haven't implemented it yet or explored its potential for better chemistry hybrid teams. I'll spend some time looking into it, thanks for the prompt. I'm considering switching to 5-3-2 as I've heard it's more solid than 3-5-2 but I'm still having reasonable success (certainly no ridiculously heavy defeats like I was experiencing at first) in Rivals with the 3-5-2 with custom instruction from the video posted here (thanks again for that whoever it was!). First step is just to get Pep in when the new icon swap challenges appear later on, then try 5-3-2 in squad battles to see if I can dig it.

@bumclasshero I'm in Div 8 currently and have mostly been only playing Rivals for objectives. I do have a much pacier Prem team as well as a solid Italian league team that I do okay with. I'll keep tinkering with this one. Nice WL result.

Any thoughts on this as a potential hybrid team? I realise there are other options such as Militao/Semedo for the defence but that will require more purchases.

I just bought a De Jong for 19.5k. There's a big price discrepancy on Xbox with him for some reason. Looks like I'll definitely be taking coins as rewards next week as almost every player feels accessible.

I packed a UEL Live Juan Jesus in the reward pack for the Bucharest SBC. Sold it as I got an untradeadable Bonucci earlier and still have my untradeadable Marquinhos if I need a Brazilian defensive link. Just so happens the price covered my earlier purchase of Insigne too.