I agree with your first statement. They made so many bad changes in order to deal with tankers and upselling that all this affected more all managers negatively. You cant tank if there isn't such an option.
Now for your second statement i disagree. If you have good team why you should play only with similar quality teams? It's even in real football where in the league is top class teams and poor teams in same division.
However, i would like to see improved game, maybe more tactical options, player roles... and not the way they doing now - side embellishments, decorations which consists of all those competitions. Once it was very interesting game but today it become definitely not managerial game