Players stats decreasing

I know as players get old their stats decrease, but why is it happening to my youngsters in the reserves/u18s? Even youngsters playing regularly in my 1st team have some stats decreasing. Is it something to do with their training?

Perhaps your training isn't the best. Or they may be over played, or just not that good. Injured players don't train, so take that into consideration, and during the holiday months (June, July, August) - players also wont train.

It might be your training facilities or youth facilities.

Are they moving from a youth training schedule to a part-time schedule?

Is this happening during the season or during the off season? If it's during the off season then it's perfectly normal for a players attributes to drop by a point or two. These will go back up once the players starts training again.

Have you recently installed a patch? If you've recently installed patch 8.0.2 and have continued a game that was started before this patch was applied then you'll find some 'attribute realignment' occurring. This was done to take into account the effect of either footed players and players who could play in many positions.

What are your training facilities and coaches like? If you're in the lower leagues and have poor coaches and facilities then it's likely that players won't improve much, and may actually get worse.

If it's none of the above then it may well be down to your training schedule. Or it could be just a slight dip, this happens from time to time so it's sometimes best to look at a players development over the course of the full season rather than just on a week to week basis.