Something has changed with AI squad battles

Squad Battles AI has always been possession based. It's super annoying but once you understand it it plays out the same way the majority of the time. I reach Elite 1-2 every week, mostly playing against the Legendary difficulty, sometimes Ultimate if the team is super low rated.

I notice most of the time if you play high pressure against them in their half they'll play possession like crazy, its better to wait until they're in your half where your team is more condensed to begin trying to make tackles. Second man press is a must as they'll almost always shield dribble, then be ready to quick switch to intercept the obvious pass out from there and intercept.

The AI is pretty mechanical but it can be fooled, especially with skill moves when you're on the attack. It's like it trips the AI or something, the AI always expects you to make the obvious play and the formation will shift for that, meaning it'll always position players for the interception ETC, hence why skilling past almost always puts you into open space.

The only other suggestion I have is to not pass to much, you can sheer force your way through most of it by just running past them. In most rivals games I'll have around 150 passes made, in squad battles it's like 80. Just get the ball out to a winger and move, then cut inside for a pass to the striker. The best way of dealing with with AI is to not deal with it, don't play a game of 'football' against it, just try to limit your interactions with it as much as possible.