As I say, I actually find the AI in the ML great but I can't play the game purely because of what the last two posts have talked about (which people slate me for, "the gameplay is amazing, that's all that matters", and perhaps they're right, but that's not how I see it). The biggest reason why I've gone off PES and why I will be off it for a long time, is because the game is always the same off the pitch. ML would be great, if it had real currency instead of points, the ability to switch clubs and if the English league had an English second division rather than a European mish-mash. Call me an idiot, you wouldn't be the first, but it completely ruins the game for me knowing that this week I'm playing Birmingham, next week I'm playing AEK.
I would buy the game for online play, if it was more than random friendlies. The "other" football game (love it or hate it) has an online leagues feature, where you can set up a league with friends/enemies/Evo-Webbers. So every game affects your position in a REAL league, a REAL Premier League, instead of some 1,000,000 team "ranking" where the top 10,000 are Barcelona users who cut-back, lag-cheat and disconnect.
The AI in the ML genuinely shocked me this year, I think it's took a big step-up, and I wasn't expecting that (I thought Seabass had lost the plot but, I'm nothing if not honest - I was wrong). And honestly, there's times where I think, "damn, I feel like a game of Pro Evo". But I know that what they have done with PES2008 is not enough for me, personally. Give me a Master League that resembles REAL-LIFE. Give me an English second division (fake all the names, you don't have to buy licenses). Give me more to do online than play Barcelona and look where I place among a million people and ten thousand cheats. (And finally, although this one isn't an ultimatum because I know it will never happen, seeing as even the "other" football game has it too... Please, I beg you, remove the CPU cheating, please dear God Konami.) Only then will I buy PES again.