quality player consistently perfom poorly

[Dman2pt]

Look for the player value.
My 6* player with now 36Q 20 years has a value of 4.2M, that means that your player is a slow trainer and with the level up he tend to play worst, because he will face better players.
The other one seems good, try to put him on the other side or just alone.
My best striker scores a lot of goals whend he plays with 1 or 2 more strikers, and do a lot of assists, but If he plays alone in front, he has always bad results.

[Conker King]

I've been buying players all week that are young and worth significantly more than my players, and every one has been an average trainer. Finally yesterday I got a defensive midfielder who is a fast trainer. He's lower quality than the player he is replacing, but he'll make that up in no time. So far he's played two games and got 2 7's. Right now I'll take that and run. Frankly if all he ever gets is 7's I'll still be happy.

The twisted irony is I've had a player for that position in the squad from the start who is also a very fast trainer. He sometimes clocks up 150 in private match hard training. Unfortunatley I've only in the past week been paying attention to the actual ammounts players gain in skill. So he's just been languishing on my reserves, slowly improving when I could've been working his ass hard. If I'd started form the off he'd probably be my best player by now.