quality player consistently perfom poorly

[Conker King]

Hi, I'm a relatively new manager, I started about 6-7 weeks ago, I'm currently at level 3.

I have these two players, one is the 4th highest quality player(6 stars, 23 years old, worth 2 million) in my 22man squad, the other is the 7th(5 stars, a couple of points shy of 6, 27 years old, worth 1.3 million ). They are both defensive midfielders(that's where I play them),one on the left, one on the right, with other positions available. Game after game they get bad ratings. The 7th player will sometimes get 7s, and even occasionaly 8s, but mostly he gets 6s and sometimes 5s.

The 4th ranked player gets 6 after 6 after 6. Sometimes 5s, and even 4s.

What's going on? Is it those specific positions they're just not playing well in? Is it the formation of my team, or the team tactics? Or are they just high ranked athletes who picked the wrong sport?

I'm not sure what to do with them at this point, I don't really want to change my primary formation to cater to a better position for them, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[TALON1973]

if your winning all the time your defence tends to get 7 ratings for most matches

are you winning matches easily ?

[Conker King]

if your winning all the time your defence tends to get 7 ratings for most matches

are you winning matches easily ?

I just lost my third match of the season, got knocked out of the cup. gutted.

My defenders actually generally get pretty good ratings. Between them in the last 5 matches they got 3 9's, 5 8's and 7 7's. Last season my favourite defender (he was my first or second signing, one of only 3 players left from first season, and still in 1st team) got as many MoMs as primary attackers. I lucked out bigtime with my first couple of signings. Both still in team contributing more than players 5-6 points higher in quality.

I won 13-0 in the league earlier today - defenders got good stats, both defensive midfielders got 6s. It's mindboggling. And infuriating.

[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.