Attributes not improving?

[Aladdinsane]

Recently I reopened an old-ish long term save of mine. You know the one, the "Im going to try and win silverware with an entirely homegrown squad" one which always runs out of steam sooner or later. In came the next youth Intake but not being happy with what I was given I decided to look outside the country and scouting the Bundesliga I found myself a nice gem.

Physically gifted, strong and tall but not slow and with a good jump, the kind of player that bullied the other team's kids while in the academy because he happened to hit a growth spurt first and has everyone joking about "his real age". What I was really happy about where his mentals. A brave hard worker with a sense of teamwork and fairly determined.

There is just one problem, he is simply not good enough technically, 11 first touch, 11 technique, 12 passing. My non-playmaking centreback is better at passing the ball around than him and this young man is meant to play in my midfield in the future.

Easy, I though, Double intensity, passing focus, Playmaker roles for training and a training calendar with a possession oriented schedule twice a month should do it. So I signed him.

Now I don't want him to have first team playmaker levels of technique, training will only go so far but I was expecting that after 6 months I would have seen something resembling an improvement.

11 first touch, 11 technique, 12 passing. He is now slightly faster and his mentals have grown as I expected but after six months he hasn't improved one bit when the ball is at his feet.

 

Have any of you had similar experience? Are attribute growths hardcoded as in no matter how much you try a given player can only improve a given attribute so far? Am I going to be burdened with a hardworking lumberjack?

[Tyburn]

Is he getting loads of game time? Some players grow more than others. His hidden attributes might be coming into play in some way too. I’d also give it a year before making a more solid judgement. How old is he?