Stars or skills?

[Anders Lord]

I have been under the impression that a player's ability is measured, first and foremost, by the number of his stars. But lately I have had some serious doubts about that.
Please look at these two players:


As you can see, the first player has almost six stars and the second player only three stars.
On the other hand, the second player's skills - like shooting and finishing, essential skills for a striker - are way above the first one.
Which player is the best one?
Andy

[nikolgiorgos]

1st is the "talent" and the team chemistry.
Then it's the stars.
Skills are "broken".

[Stefanakis]

1st i saw years player
2nd skill
and finaly stars

[HairDryer]

2nd player.

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[ibangali]

I don't care about skills or star, all I care is the player FT or not
I don't buy any player over 19 yo, except reco offer n must be beginning of the season. My understanding over 22 yo players are seasonal players.

[LarryC]

1st is the "talent" and the team chemistry.
Then it's the stars.
Skills are "broken".

Mostly agree. The player's inner quality, the talent, or whatever you call it, cannot be changed by training more and increasing stars, adding SAs etc... It can even change from one season to the next, without any other change by the manager.

IMHO, skills are not broken, they just not used by the game engine. It's only a gimmick for the training.

[Kto]

From my experience skills play a role, so I value skills over stars, but more important is hidden talent imo.

[Anders Lord]

It's interesting, then, that my second player, the 27 year-old one with three stars, does score more goals and perform better than the younger, five-star player.

[KenoticFC]

I tend to focus on stars since they also increase the overall quality of your team. And like niko said skills don't seem to do that much.

[pcmacdaniel]

skills do matter, but having better skills doesn't guarantee victory. Other things like match preparation and tactics matter as well; the later one (tactics) being extremely important.

To emphasize that skills matter, i'll use my association as an example. We have 3 or 4 members that have had the gray stats @ 1% for several months now and some 1% skewed players go out on loan. Having lower gray stat average, doesn't guarantee victory, members with such skills still do lose or draw matches. However, when its 3 or 4 managers with such players and loans got out to other matches, collectively its just too much for the opponents to overcome. Normally they get points in at least one of those matches, but at the end it's like a 5-1-2 or 6-1-1 type record in our favor (unless they have low gray stats as well) in those matches.

That said, I think your players are fairly close in ability to my eyes. I'd just go with whoever is more productive at this point, which is the your 27 year old based upon what you posted above OP.