I learned I needed to correct the roles of my players. Martial and Dembélé had the pace to Madden 21 coins get in to, but I was not instructing them to do this; I shifted their roles, and they started to make more off-the-ball conducts for me personally. This allowed me to use their pace to better break the lines. I also looked to Skill Moves; imitation shots, as an instance, gave me a way to better beat defenders, and while I do not think I'll ever be able to execute the type of trickery you see YouTube, I began to have the ability to earn space for my own forwards against rugged centre backs.

Once I began comfortably winning Squad Battle games on World Class, I knew I was qualified to provide Division Rivals another go, and I was interested to see how I fared against individual competitors. I had a very good squad, but crucially I'd learned how to strike and shield; there was no way I would be staying in Division 9 for very long.

In my surprise, even at the doldrums of the branch, I was coming up against squads better than mine -- we're talking 89-rated teams, the majority of the time. And, despite all that I had learned offline, I had been conceding a great deal of goals, too. I'd find that I'd be able to keep opponents to two or three shots per game, however I would concede all of them; conversely, I would have upwards of ten shots myself, and just put away two or one. Losing a match 3-1 despite dominating the game turned into a difficult pill to swallow.

But I found that wins would come in classes: I would get three or four on the rebound, go up into Division 8, then lose a few and fall back down. My one aim, actually, wasn't to embarrass myself: I did not mind losing, I just didn't want to go battered 8-0. And to my credit, that never occurred: there was one game where I went 3-0 down in about half an hour, but ended up fighting my way back to 3-3; a huge achievement against a player who was clearly a shade better than me.

I currently find myself in Division 7, and while I understand there will be people reading this chuckling to themselves at such a lowly achievement, the difference in my general play is night and day. If I could play myself from two or three weeks ago, I'd probably win 15-0; the advancement was dramatic. I am still making silly mistakes and panicking defensively when I shouldn't, and I'm not scoring as many goals as I believe I need to be, but mut 21 coins cheap there's no question I have improved a lot.