When attempting to sign a player via a free transfer, i always use the assman to give me a quick guide as to whether the player is any good or not by going to the offer contract screen and seeing what the assman comments are - "Decent Player" or "Good Player" for example.

The next step is for me to scout the player using one of my scouts, and fairly often the scout gives a slightly different impression. Presumably (and also dependent on ability) the Scout is the more accurate?

The trouble is, its the assman who calls the shots here. Its him that gives players 1 to 6 stars in the Team Report screen, and him that recommends whether a player should be offered a new contract or not, therefore i'm more likely to accept the assman's opinion on a player.

So my question is, who should i trust, or am i doing it right anyway?

what i do for free transfers is scout the players which my ass man has said are decent+ , then rely on mt scout to give the final report on the player , this then allows me decide wether or not to offer him a trial .

Well look at the stats of your Assistant Manager and your Scout regarding;

Judging Player Ability

and

Judging Player Ability

I trust whoever has the better stat out of them.

Generally the staff member with the highest JPA/JPP attributes.

If your assman has low attributes, ignore his team report and decide for yourself.

if you want to play on expert level, ignore both of them and make your own decisions based on the attributes and previous stats of the player. Scouting is good for finding players especially if your team is not international but it does not help much when it comes to commmenting. Assistant managers are unfortunately making lots of senseless comments in many places so I would not count on them much or in long run you cant be succesful.

Only trust yourself

I usually use my scouts as an indicator then decide myself on attributes/stats etc.

Serdar: Its very difficult just to ignore them both. I've found some fantastic players with fantastic attributes after manually searching clubs around the world yet the scout tells me they are just "decent".

Are you saying its possible to discover an excellent player (capable of top flight football) who is rated "decent" or 2 stars?

Would you choose this guy over someone rated "great asset" or 5 stars if you felt you were the expert?

Not sure, as I may assign different scouts, assistant manager, though its always my gut feeling that makes me choose any how.

Though I do find it helps on info such as how much they're prepared to the loose the player for.

There have been times when I have signed a player who was getting masses of interaction, with the masses not approving the signing, should offload in the future some turned out to be fine.

Remember its your judgement that counts. Not there's on topic, I go of who has the best stats On PA

You can look at your coaches and scouts opinion of players that you've signed (coach reports), only thing is you can't do it all on one screen like the assman reports.
Btw, the rating is 1-7 not 1-6.
I like to give my scouts and any coaches with decent JPA/JPP a nickname with their abilities tagged on the end (e.g. scout_name 15/12) so I can tell at a glance if they're the right people to trust.I do this at the start of every season so it's also handy for keeping an eye on whether your scout is dropping in ability as well.
Unfortunately I'm stuck with an assman at the moment with a JPA of 1 :-(
As for signing new players, I find the overview screen rather than the attributes screen in player comparison more useful.Not much help when it comes to buying kids but the only solution I've found there is to go for the quantity AND quality option.