I dunno. I'm now level 56 and now seriously starting to contemplate throwing in the towel after over 4 years of playing every day. Since this new scout thing turned up expecting you to spend a fortune to get half decent players, it feels like I'm being penalised for having never spent any cash on the game. Various tactics and formations have done nothing for the last 3 seasons, losing to teams way lower with no active manager, having good runs after buying a normal scout player but then losing repeatedly a couple of games later.

It's quite apparent that while you're playing for free you can forget about winning. I went 51 seasons never finishing out of the top 4, now can barely dig a win from anywhere. Whatever's changed has ruined it for F2P players.

So no. Attending matches doesn't make any difference. Spending money makes a difference.