I'm really not sure how seriously to take people who believe that they can watch a player, even over a period of 10 games, and then plot their future career path with a degree of certainty that even most managers would admit is nigh on impossible. Where the obsession with certainly comes from, I have no idea, but I'm fairly sure that it isn't the case that those who are the most certain about these things are in possession of some kind of secret knowledge that the rest of us simply don't have access to. In fact, it has been shown that the opposite is usually the case. People who sound certain and use language that appears to offer no possibility of their minds being changed are often the least knowledgeable, but they attempt to hide that fact behind a facade of unwarranted certainty.
And that kind of certainty almost guarantee's that if you had just so happened to have caught many of the greatest players of all time on several bad days, some people would have written them off as being "shit", or as, "never going to make it". It is true that some very talented players catch the eye almost immediately, but I've also lost count of the number of young players that have really excited me on first viewing, only for them to completely fall off the radar not too long after that. And it's easy to forget those who went on to become fantastic footballers, yet started out their career as relative unknowns. The very fact that they were at one point relative unknowns inevitably means that the only time that we do notice them is when they are already well on their way to becoming fantastic players, so we often have not had the opportunity to recognize how much some footballers change in their formative years, particularly as they are getting used to playing first team football.
I suppose that it's the caviler approach that I don't really like. The more that I watch football, the more cautious I become about predicting anything, particularly where young players are concerned. Yes, that is largely ego driven, I suppose, in that I really don't want to be wrong, but I'd also like to think that I've seen enough evidence to suggest that football cannot be as simple as many people like to make it out to be.
However, it is also true that you can only be honest about your opinion, and I certainly don't think that people should be afraid to express their opinions, even when — and particularly so — those opinions are not necessarily popular. But it might help if more people were aware of of the pitfalls of their own belief forming processes. One point that I have made before is about how little detailed information we remember, particularly when watching live games. I used to regularly watch replays of United games — and still do when I have the time — and it is truly amazing how much more you learn about those games and players on the field when watching for a second or third time, and particularly when there is none of the emotion or tension of not knowing what is going to happen. It is only then that you can truly become an observer, in my opinion.
One other thing that I have also noticed is how much people tend to remember certain incidents during games, like the goals, bad mistakes, crunching tackles, etc, and on the flip side, how they tend to gloss over much of the action in the middle third of the pitch. I really don't know why that is, though I suspect that the kind of action that happens in that area — lots of short passing, generally — seems to all blend in to obscurity, due to the fact that much of what happens is very similar. And it is precisely because so much of the same kind of actions take place in that area of the field that it is inevitably going to be difficult to remember much detail about what actually does happen. Plus, it is probably also the case that our brains take a brief moment of respite in those instances, in anticipation of the next time that one of the sides reaches the edge of the opposition penalty area.
And that can have a negative impact on our assessment of central midfield players, especially. Michael Carrick is a classic example of this, because he tends to keep the game ticking over — something that it vital to winning a game — and a lot of that isn't recognized, either because people view it just what he does (as if it it somehow easy), or because it is much harder to recollect moments that particularly stick out in your mind. That does not, however, mean that all of those touches of the ball are not vital to winning the game. I would argue that the opposite is true, in fact, even if it is not instantly recognizable as such.
