Why is it ok to rate/criticise a player if you haven't watched him play every minute every game?

And why it ok to presume as well?

Because you've watched him enough to form an informed opinion about him. You don't need to have watched every game Di Maria has ever played to know that he has poor positioning and can run like a headless chicken. You can see that in 2-3 games. Watching him for 8-10 games will further enhance your understanding. More than that will probably do very little unless you didn't take time to observe him before. Once you've watched a number of games that is statistically significant you are free to make conclusions. It'd be ridiculous if we were expected to watch every minute a player has played in order to assess his value.

Exactly what BC said.

Its not presumption at all.

You dont need every single game to judge what a player is about. Your only making a statement based on what you seen anyways, that goes without saying.

That's true, but my point is how can you for example say Di Maria is the best winger in the World, without watching every minute of him and then comparing him with other wingers and watching every minute of them?

I dont think you need to watch every single game, you probably dont even need to watch most of the games. You can just see whos better.

There is also a difference between best performing player at the time, be it a week, month or even a year really and out and out better. Performance is determined on many factors, some of them outside the control of the player..but the actual better player is different. I just think its important to preference any comment you make with that distinction when you start comparing players.

For example. If I said, Di Maria is performing better than Ribery, that would be unfair. Because in recent times I seen alot more Di Maria than Ribery, not enough Ribery in fact.

But I can say Ribery is better and its fair, because the times I seen both, I get the feeling and impression Ribery is the more polished player.

Because you've seen enough of Di Maria and enough of the other wingers to have formed an informed opinion of them. You certainly can't make the statement "Di Maria is the best winger in the world" if you haven't seen Valencia play, for instance, but if you watch enough of all of the ones that are considered good to great in the position then you can form an informed opinion.

I guess what you're trying to get at is that it's possible you might happen to watch Di Maria's 10 best matches and Valencia's 10 worst, so your opinion is biased because of the matches you watched. As Dani said, it goes without saying that your opinion is that formed by your experience. And there is a chance that you might watch a sample that you think is representative but it turns out not to be. However, it's very unlikely that will happen if you watch enough games. So the more games you watch the more informed your opinion, but once you get to a certain point the amount of games you've watched is probably representative of the quality of the player.

What if a player improves, declines or adds something to his repertoire?

And how about if you're asked to judge based on form?

Well, exactly because I can't watch every player every minute they play, I refrain from all of these absolute rankings people love to engage here as these can never be significant for want of sufficient information. Moreover, most people let their likes/dislikes for certain clubs/leagues/etc cloud their vision, too, thus confusing the issue even more.

Yohan Modric wrote:What if a player improves, declines or adds something to his repertoire?

And how about if you're asked to judge based on form?

If you watch often enough over an extended period of time, you will know both of those things. Especially the first.

Form. It depends on what you call form, last 5 game, like 3 months, whatever the case may be.

And in order to judge a player based on form, you would have to watch let's say all of his games this season? Not just a handful?

So say you were asked to form the best EPL team for the first 3 months of the season, you would have to watch every player for every position for the 3 months?

You could watch 20 games without realising ibra is capable of that goal

Sure you can, perhaps you wouldn't have predicted that goal, but everyone who has seen Ibra play knows he's quite capable of magic.

Yohan Modric wrote:What if a player improves, declines or adds something to his repertoire?

And how about if you're asked to judge based on form?

The best players don't improve or decline or add something extra to the point where the degree of spontaneity is wildly unpredictable. They are usually very consistent, whether they are on form or off it.

Form correlates directly from consistency. That's how we're able to rate players and criticize them for either being extremely and consistently good or extremely or consistently bad. Dive deeper into it and then we get more into technique, passing, off-the-ball movement, demeanor and body language as well as mentality and confidence. The cause of good or bad form stems precisely from either a dip or a rise in one of these characteristics. And we know this from watching for changes in these in players like Di Maria.

Probability also plays a part and without it, we literally would have to watch every single game to rate a player accurately. Instead, we can watch any respectable number and postulate that a given player will play in a given way based on how he played against similar opposition in a similar XI using similar tactics.

if the only way to be in a postion to rate/criticise etc a player would be to watch every minute in every game they play, the only way to become an "informed" football fan woould be to sit at home all day everday with a tin foil hat on your head watching tapes upon tapes of games

plus imagine the complications this could then draw for managers and the people involved in tranfers, imagine a scout telling you, "sorry im not in apostion where i can recomend or not recomend this player to you as ive only watched 90% of his games over the last three seasons"

At some point you do have to consider efficency

Well the scout would need to know how consistent he is.

How he plays vs top teams, mid table teams and lower teams.

At the very least the scout would have to watch every game the player played in from the previous season.

lol scouts are not at every game brah.

On TV?

But if any of us are "scouting a player" we can do the same.

For example, when there was talk of Barca signing Vertoghen, I took it upon myself to watch a 5 game sample, 5 games in a row.

I did the same when we had intrest in Luis Suarez back in his Ajax days and I do it every now and again to get informed.

Also, the scout has a job to do, he has to report what he sees. But even he, I assure you, doesnt watch every single game a guy has ever played.

When Barca signed Cesc, do you think they watched every single game in just that season? I am almost 100% sure the answer is no.

Also, I dont know about anyone else, but for me, there are quite alot of players now that if I watch a game, I am not learning anything new whatsoever. I mean, sure, to see how they are doing RIGHT NOW then
you need to see. But really, if I watch Cristiano Ronaldo this weekend, im not going to learn 1 single thing I didnt know before.

Well, my point is more that it is impractical to do a ranking of players as one can't sufficiently monitor all the players in that case. I prefer to look at a player for himself and rather do an assessment of his skills & abilities to see whether he can do what I consider important.

IMO it is not really necessary to set up a monumental ranking as there are likely several players who are at similar levels and putting one higher or lower is usually only a momentous picture as there can always be dips in form or peaks of form which make it rather senseless to set up an absolute "better than" / "worse than" table.

I'd say forming an opinion or coming to conclusion based on 2, or 3 games is more of stereotyping and cant be accurate ,because every game is different from the other and player performances are different as well , even the great players have some games they don't want to remember