**Time to Judge?**

[sirpiechucker]

How much time is enough time to judge a player?

New thread after new thread gets started about who we should buy and how this player or that player will solve our problems but what are these opinions based on? How many times have people seen Tommy Spurr? Once? Twice? Same can be asked about Cox, Beckford, Bogdani, Fox, Adebola. I, like you have seen our own players have matches which they are shocking and matches which they have sparkled in. If I had only ever seen Damion Stewart twice and one of them was against Wolves would I really been able to make a proper judgement on the player? His mistake which led to the Wolves goal would make me think that he should never play professional football let alone be a clubs player of the year. So for those who saw Sheffield Wednesday at home and either went to Hillsbrough of caught another one of their matches on TV what makes you think that two games is enough to judge a player? Or are your opinions based on what you've read, what ex-professionals on Saturday afternoon have said about a player or is it simply a hunch?

We know for a fact that Dowie and Paladini went to a youth tournament last season where they saw both De Carmine and Ledesma. At this tournament they viewed both players in one match and believed that it was enough to sign them for the season. Both must have impressed ahead of other players that day but was one match enough to judge someone? When at Man City, Erikkison admitted to having signed players based on watching DVD footage but had never seen the likes of Petrov and Elano in real life. These signings have proved to work out well but Bojinov and Bianchi haven't. Teams with endless pots of cash can take risks but can we afford too? Does Paladini himself watch players enough not to make expensive mistakes?

Because of live TV and because of extended highlights and the mass attention premiership players get we all know that the likes of Fabregas, Gerrard, Rooney, Torres etc are class players without ever having to watch them in the flesh. We also know that Titus Bramble is woeful and should not be allowed to earn the vast sums of money as a professional football even without ever having turned up at the JJB to see for ourselves.

Sorry for the rant and ramble but next time you start a thread it would be interesting to hear what you base your opinions on. I've heard many positives about Cox, Hooper and Beckford but scoring against the likes Hereford, Crewe, Cheltenham and Northampton is much different then even scoring against Charlton, Norwich and Saints. Is it fair to compare the amount one of these has scored against some poor opposition to the likes of Blackstock, Helguson and De Carmine who we are all quick to judge.

[Sleeping Giants]

How much time is enough time to judge a player?

New thread after new thread gets started about who we should buy and how this player or that player will solve our problems but what are these opinions based on? How many times have people seen Tommy Spurr? Once? Twice? Same can be asked about Cox, Beckford, Bogdani, Fox, Adebola. I, like you have seen our own players have matches which they are shocking and matches which they have sparkled in. If I had only ever seen Damion Stewart twice and one of them was against Wolves would I really been able to make a proper judgement on the player? His mistake which led to the Wolves goal would make me think that he should never play professional football let alone be a clubs player of the year. So for those who saw Sheffield Wednesday at home and either went to Hillsbrough of caught another one of their matches on TV what makes you think that two games is enough to judge a player? Or are your opinions based on what you've read, what ex-professionals on Saturday afternoon have said about a player or is it simply a hunch?

We know for a fact that Dowie and Paladini went to a youth tournament last season where they saw both De Carmine and Ledesma. At this tournament they viewed both players in one match and believed that it was enough to sign them for the season. Both must have impressed ahead of other players that day but was one match enough to judge someone? When at Man City, Erikkison admitted to having signed players based on watching DVD footage but had never seen the likes of Petrov and Elano in real life. These signings have proved to work out well but Bojinov and Bianchi haven't. Teams with endless pots of cash can take risks but can we afford too? Does Paladini himself watch players enough not to make expensive mistakes?

Because of live TV and because of extended highlights and the mass attention premiership players get we all know that the likes of Fabregas, Gerrard, Rooney, Torres etc are class players without ever having to watch them in the flesh. We also know that Titus Bramble is woeful and should not be allowed to earn the vast sums of money as a professional football even without ever having turned up at the JJB to see for ourselves.

Sorry for the rant and ramble but next time you start a thread it would be interesting to hear what you base your opinions on. I've heard many positives about Cox, Hooper and Beckford but scoring against the likes Hereford, Crewe, Cheltenham and Northampton is much different then even scoring against Charlton, Norwich and Saints. Is it fair to compare the amount one of these has scored against some poor opposition to the likes of Blackstock, Helguson and De Carmine who we are all quick to judge.

I hear a lot about how Dennis Bergkamp was rubbish for about 6 months but then got used to the English game and was brilliant.....likewise with many other imports into the Premiership......why should it be any different in the Championship. Arsene Wenger was big enough to stick by Bergkamp but we gave up on Parejo & Ledesma far too quickly. Parejo gets into the Real Madrid occasionally and we (not me) reckon he's ****?.....How can he be??

[sirpiechucker]

I hear a lot about how Dennis Bergkamp was rubbish for about 6 months but then got used to the English game and was brilliant.....likewise with many other imports into the Premiership......why should it be any different in the Championship. Arsene Wenger was big enough to stick by Bergkamp but we gave up on Parejo & Ledesma far too quickly. Parejo gets into the Real Madrid occasionally and we (not me) reckon he's ****?.....How can he be??

Because some people are impatient and expect immediate success. Some think that if a player performs well in the first match then they are amazing and go out a buy a t-shirt with their name on and if they play badly they are subject to abuse. Some don't even have to play badly to get that - the treatment of Cerny springs to mind.

Ledesma must have performed well in front of Dowie/GP to be given a contract but after Carlisle his performances went downhill. Why? Bad management or because we actually didn't see enough of him and judge him properly?

I wish both the board and this board would judge people once they have seen a player a number of times rather than be so quick to think that a player is either the messiah or a waste of space.

[Sam-QPR]

agree with most of what you said

however i think the foreign players are good players but just didn't adapt to the english game. we can't judge how players will perform unless we see them play in our team. will a trial be enough to judge? or do we have to take these risks sometimes. in every transfer there is always an element of risk. man united payed millions for ronaldo which was a massive risk but it payed off wheras they signed forlan and he didn't score for a long time. some risk's pay off some don't.

[sirpiechucker]

agree with most of what you said

however i think the foreign players are good players but just didn't adapt to the english game. we can't judge how players will perform unless we see them play in our team. will a trial be enough to judge? or do we have to take these risks sometimes. in every transfer there is always an element of risk. man united payed millions for ronaldo which was a massive risk but it payed off wheras they signed forlan and he didn't score for a long time. some risk's pay off some don't.

You are quite right. Forlan failed, Morientes and Voronin at Liverpool failed so did Kluivert when at Newcastle and Shevchenko at Chelsea. The difference with them though is that they didn't seem such a risk when buying them. They were all experienced international footballers unlike our unexperienced kids who couldn't get into their first teams side.

I agree the only way to see if these players adapt it to take a risk but for a team trying to get out of the Championship should we have taken that risk when there were better options available. I've no idea how much was spent on the Ledesma, Parejo and De Carmine experiment but collectively would it have cost as much as say Ben Watson? A player who the club would have seen a number of times, a player clearly wanting to leave Crystal Palace, a player who Palace were prepared to sell and player who we could have bought if we had stretched to £2m (£750k more than we were prepared to offer). In the end the difference between 11th and 6th wasn't one player but the risk was always going to be smaller and the reward more likely to be greater.