Written formations like 4-2-3-1 don't actually mean much, you can play an incredibly wide variety of ways from the same basic starting shape. Here's an awesome post by a coach on Reddit that talks about this stuff a little more. Marsch ran the attack almost exclusively through the middle of the field, Armas goes mostly down the right side through Murillo. Marsch would literally set a shot clock for the team to get a shot on goal as quickly as possible, Armas prefers to actually keep some possession in the final third. Stuff like that completely changes how a team would approach us defensively.
Does any coach ever actually instruct their team to shoot from distance? This one's definitely not just you Grelladinho, seen this pop up from a bunch of fans since last season. It sounds odd that you'd prefer your guys take low-chance shots. Reminds me of the guy who bought Cardiff City in England a few years ago and asked why guys weren't shooting from midfield.
Thanks for the Reddit link, will delve into it later.
You are right about how coaches can deploy the same formation differently --- I think overall though I would like Armas to experiment with two forwards, or a few others to play farther up the field with BWP.
As for low percentage shots, doing those is better than not shooting at all. You could tell in the Orlando game that the approach wasn't working, yet they continued to play through Duncan and pass the ball around, or lob it to BWP and leave him alone up there. Davis and Rza have scored from distance before. Why should players like them not shoot more? Any deflection could help.