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I use a lot of Little Green, their Absolute Matt doesn't like to be touched by anything, even rubbing it with a silk cloth makes it shiny.
It's one area in life where I am qualified to say I'm an expert and I've painted many litres of both Little Green and Mylands without noticing any distinct difference between the way they handle.
The technique you ended up using, rolling small areas and brushing out the texture is standard practice for me when I'm using very matt emulsions, i.e. lots of solids. Mylands do have a particularly heavy base but the LG Absolute still needs to be handled the same way. I use a small roller in a hand held paint pot with a brush held in it by magnets for these types of paint. In fairness you need to be able to paint pretty fast to avoid dry edges and I have over 30 years professional experience so maybe that plays a role.
If you didn't wash the walls with sugar soap first you should definitely try that. I find it helps with any type of further paint application. You could also have added 10% water instead of floetrol. I do have a tub of floetrol handy at all times, especially in the summer as it can make a big difference to how easy a day you are having when it's hot and dry.
“Mylands is one of my current favourites for fancy paint.”
i tried to paint my kitchen with it and while i’m no expert i know how to apply and lay off to get a decent finish with no streaks but the paint was drying so fast i couldn’t get a decent finish and it was very patchy and the last roller direction was clearly visible even if i did the flick up/down and decreasing the pressure as you roll off the wall. only way i could work was with a brush and dithering the direction randomly and working in small areas at a time, even then you are painting next to a dry edge that you covered 2 mins previous.
in the shop they said i needed to add a product called flositrol to retard the drying which is only available in big tins and makes the already expensive paint even more ridiculous.
will never buy that shit again.
i’ll stick to little green, people say it’s not as good as trade paint but i haven’t found anything that gets a really nice flat mat finish and the times i have tried cheaper paint matched to sourdough crust/audi bootliner grey/waitrose green colours they alway have shiny patches and not totally flat.