my free kick specialists

[Buffs Mad]

iirc the devs, when pushed, said an SA makes a 1* difference to the relevant attributes when an SA event is triggered - but it was a long time ago so I can't swear to it.

I'd interpret that to mean shooting is +5Q when shooting from a FK with SA; crossing......etc. How much impact 'not improving' the attacking skills has on the outcome will depend on how good he is at FKs naturally. A very good FK taker could survive quite a bit of lag, an average one not imo.

How good a player is at FKs will not just be about this Q effect but also some sort of 'performance' issue too.

The first question is always 'is he good at FKs?', if so, on average, you're going to need to at least maintain his attacking skills to maintain the performance. But its always possible to find someone who is so good at FKs that he'll be unaffected by attacking skill lag but I suspect thats rare.

PS My original alt team had a DC with FK SA that banged them in for 2 seasons and his success was hardly affected by his lagging attacking skills. I'd guess he was just born to be a FK taker and was lucky to have been given the SA that's suits at 'birth'. Unfortunately although I have a screeny of some of his goal scoring I don't have one of his attributes. This is the type of latent ability that folks refer to as 'hidden'/'programming'/'Voodoo'