Well my observetions are quite different. Any changes you make do not affect the game at all. What happens is that teams quite often perfom differently on each half of the game even if you don't make any change. ex. You score 5 goals on first half and then, without any changes, you score only one or no goals on second or the other way around. This is quite easy to observe if you play a lot of friendlies against the same team.