Doesn't this mean you are just both shit at manual?
It being more realistic doesnt mean it will miraculously automatically give you the average pass completion stats in real life football.
Its based on your ability at manual along with the players you have at your disposal.
Just because you put a league 3 player in a premiership game in real life it doesn't mean his passing will match to those premiership players around him.
If your crap at manual then your passing stats will be shit
(Just a dsclaimer here, i am not great at manual, but I just find your statement/argument weird)
Yep, if you were to only consider this one match, yeah you could infer that we're both absolute shit at manual. And I'm certainly not great at manual, but this was extremely poor. I kinda feel like there's something off with rain games and manual - I'll usually average in the 70s in online manual matches but in rain games, I'm just horrendous.
But the other point is that manual passing settings are not necessarily more realistic than assisted, which is a point I've been making for years. This isn't saying there aren't clear benefits to playing manual - it's more challenging, it provides greater freedom, and it
can have the indirect effect of making matches play out in a more realistic fashion, in some ways at least.
But there's a flip side to manual. It can make top teams look like Sunday league teams in the passing game. Short, simple passes are often harder, and riskier, than long through passes, giving a disadvantage to passing teams, while it encourages excessive dribbling or just spamming grounded through passes. Player passing stats are diminished at the expense of increasing the influence of user aim.
Personally, imo the best passing setup is one in which short easy passes are set to assisted or semi, and long through passes and lofted balls are set to manual. That to me would give the best of both worlds, and if this were the default setup, you'd take away a lot of the worst aspects of online play, because you'd put greater emphasis on build up play while making the highlight-reel passes more rare and thus more rewarding.
***Edit: I should note that I'm talking about playing at default sliders and that I understand that the various popular manual slider sets make manual much easier and more viable by slowing the game down. Again, I'm only talking about default FIFA (yes Placebo, I play vanilla FIFA).