Agreed!!! constantly use this to swing the ball into runner.. really whips in, particularly as you say with the right player. In fact I use this pretty much anytime other than using the ground ball. Quicker and more accurate way of getting the ball around.
I know some of you guys know this already, but another little tip. When you head the ball back to your keeper, normally he'll pick it up, which kind of slows your game down alittle (depending on how you want to play). But, if you head the ball back, and as the ball makes its way to the keeper, you hold down r3 (press and hold down the right stick), the keeper traps the ball with his feet.... you can then speed things up this way.
If you change your mind, you can actually pick the ball up from your feet, by pressing r1.
Also about the kit importation. I tested it for about 30mins today. I have two versions of the game, ie. us and aust.. the us has kits imported, the aust version doesn't. I played arsenal v westham same setting for both, except one game with imported kits followed by a game with default kits. For me its not a huge difference, particularly ai wise.. but the thing I did notice, is that with the default kits (ie. none imported), the game did seem SLOWER...
Also, and this may be a coincidence (since I only played around 2 games of each method).. but the cpu made quite a few more fouls with default kits??? Rarely get any normally. But using default arsenal v westham produced heaps of fouls from ai hmmm... got one against me in the first 15 secs, wasn't a sliding tackle but a push. Don't wanna open up a new can of worms here, but there is some effect to this importing kits. Again, the main difference I noticed was game speed. Interesting...