Can a players potential ability change?

hi guys, as the title says, can it change? I'm sure a players potential ability was 4 stars when I bought him but he is now 3.5 stars, I'm still at same club, I haven't scouted him since, its the same report from when I originally scouted him :confused:

i've noticed that the star rating in my Scout reports change as well. I would expect it to stay the same until i rescouted the player.

of course the Scout could have got the rating wrong. they could have over, or under, rated the player and so the player is actually better ( or worse), but that should be found out with a subsequent scouting mission instead of a scouting report - which should be a point-in-time-report - changing.

The PA is fixed. It may be due to your scout being inaccurate.

The star rating is relative to the players in your squad, so a player might be 5 stars if you scout him with Swansea and 3 stars if you scout him with Man Utd. So maybe your squad has improved as potential is fixed.

If there is some time between the scout report and him joining your club, your team may have gotten better in the meantime. Other reasons (than inaccurate scout report) could be that he isn't match fit, that he is in poor form, he got one year older and so the likelihood of him actually reaching his potential is lower - which is a significant factor in PA scouting.

If there is some time between the scout report and him joining your club, your team may have gotten better in the meantime. Other reasons (than inaccurate scout report) could be that he isn't match fit, that he is in poor form, he got one year older and so the likelihood of him actually reaching his potential is lower - which is a significant factor in PA scouting.

my scout found him in around September time, I bought him but he didn't join till January

Or he could have a bad personality, and hence his potential isn't rated that high, despite a high PA, then you tutor him, personality improves, potential would be rated more highly as well, despite the fact it was fixed.

he got one year older and so the likelihood of him actually reaching his potential is lower - which is a significant factor in PA scouting.

One factor could be that the scout has a different opinion to which ever coach has written the report that rates him when he joins your club. If you go through the different coaches on the player reports there will be differences in how they rank your players at any position. Also if a player hasn't played regularly he will be listed as having less stars.

Note that it doesn't need to be a whole year, the game just looks at age in years. PAs often drop on a player's birthday.

Yes that was what I tried to say

We could all just say that star rating dropping is very normal, I think.