Has anyone experience this before?

I put my scout (20 judging ability and 20 judging potential) on a young 18 year old player called Havard Nordtveit and got back a scout report that said he had the potential to far exceed my current best defender. So I splashed out 2.5 mil on him.

After I bought him, I checked his coach reports and then found his currently ability is some way off my current best defender (when I bought him he was meant to be better) and had the potential to "be as good as..." my current best defender?!

What the hell happened there? His morale is a bit poo at the moment, but that's probably because he's suddenly lost his ability and potential.

Is it his training? Do I need to heap praise on him? What is wrong? Has his ability been lost forever?

Scouts and coach reports have been greatly toned down in accuracy, particularly for young players. If at one point they pick up on 'leading' potential I find that they rarely turn out to be total rubbish, but I've often found my assistant and one of my scouts who are both 20/20 differ a lot on their judge of potential, my assistant being far more conservative.

On the other hand, I signed an Austrian in League One who was 'decent championship' and playing at full potential. He's now European midfielder of the year with an embarrassment of 20s across the board, just as I've gone up the leagues he's kept adapting to the competition levels. Its far more of a lottery now, and while I initial disliked it I'm quite liking that its not as sure a thing any more. At least 4 or 5 of my youngsters have been described at one point as being fairly average and gone on to become world beaters.

Actually looking back at his history - bought in League One for £30k. Not bad.

There is a decrease in the quality of 20/20 scouts, but it could be that the coach that you're asking to analyse him has low JA/JP, so he underestimates it. What does your coach report from your 20/20 scout say about him? Also, how old was the scout report? Since you got the report, he may have lost CA and is now unlikely to reach his full PA.

It was a very recent scout report where he had a 7 star potential. Now from the same scout he has a 3 star potential and I've only had the player for about 5 matches or so. I'm just a bit confused as to how the reports can be so different after such a short amount of time, I almost feel cheated that I paid so much for him and he's so quickly turned out to not be the player I first bought.

That is quite odd. You may want to report that on the bugs forum, and see if it is a bug, or just how the game works - some signings don't live up to their potential, but such a sharp swing in such a small time does seem unusual.