After stumbling upon this thread, I basically stopped playing Football Manager. Today, something struck me and I decided to conduct a little testing, but using FM 2017. That was the version I spent the most time with. I've done a little testing, and physical attributes are still the most important. But there's a small glimmer of hope. In Football Manager 24 and 26, setting all physical attributes to 20, plus work rate, anticipation, and dribbling to 20, won everything. The remaining attributes to 1. In my first test in FM 2017, after setting these attributes, I placed 4th, 3rd, and 5th in the Spanish league, respectively.
In the next three seasons, adding all technical attributes to these attributes to 15, I placed first three times.
I think this might be interesting. Could someone test this more thoroughly in the 2017 version? It seems that in this version physical attributes are still very important but other attributes are not dead.
I'm also adding this test. While it applies to the 2018 version, it seems that the 2017 and 2018 versions may differ in their use of attributes that are dead in versions 24 and 26.
In my first test in FM 2017, after setting these attributes, I placed 4th, 3rd, and 5th in the Spanish league, respectively.
In the next three seasons, adding all technical attributes to these attributes to 15, I placed first three times.
I think this might be interesting. Could someone test this more thoroughly in the 2017 version? It seems that in this version physical attributes are still very important but other attributes are not dead.
https://strikerless.com/2017/12/16/fm18-labs-we-need-to-talk-about-decisions/
I'm also adding this test. While it applies to the 2018 version, it seems that the 2017 and 2018 versions may differ in their use of attributes that are dead in versions 24 and 26.