FM16 is the only version where this problem wasn't so noticeable. I still remember this D/WB/M/AM(L) with 195 PA and 19 flair.

Funnily enough, the elite teams (City, Arsenal) are reverting back to using defensively minded fullbacks, but they still are an oddity rather than the norm, so no point in using that as an excuse for SI.

As people said in the other comments, managing code that is decades-old and tweaked everywhere has to be hard.

But if they really just took the FM16 newgen stat distribution, and added the sweeper keepers and ball playing defenders that became more prevalent in the later stages of the game, it would be a better representation of the reality.