My take on the PM is that it shows every time a pass is made that results in a goal. There is nothing special with the pass. It can be a good pass or just an easy one. In close or from far away.

Ds and especially DCs make very few assists anyway -- how could we know if it's working or not by just going by the sign? Like if the going rate is 3 assists per DC and season, a PM getting 4 would be a 33% increase, but it's so marginal that it's lost in the margin of error.

My best guess is that the Dribbler and PM ability always are in effect. Like giving each player 20% more in the relevant abilities.

Nash- I think the abilities matter, but not so much that they have a big impact on individual performances. Like I've played friendlies against someone 30x higher than me a while back (lvl 3 vs 58). The other guys players were not 15x as fast, they are not even 2x faster. But he took control of the game and won like 5-0. Very generally, I think the engine work as everything being equal as a starting point, formation, ability and what not aside. Then tactics, ability and a random factor affects the individual situations -- but not to a dominating extent so to speak. Like, if a striker on a lvl 58 team has the ability 350 in shooting and my goalie has 40 in reflexes -- the result is not that the striker would score 99 goals in 100 situations as opposed to 10 in 100 compared to strikers at the same lvl as the goalie or whatever. The result seem to be more like that the better striker maybe scores 20 in 100 in stead of 10 in 100.