guys, obviously the only thing that matters in this list is riberys ranking.

I expect a solid top 15 place for him, since he was by far (i think its the biggest difference between first and second best ranked player in the history of the internet rankings) the best player in the bundesliga, the league with 3/3 first place finishes in the cl and 4/4 qualifying euro league teams.

Ehhh, think he's taken a significant step backwards this year. Watching him get abused by Emenike in the last Spartak game was pretty indicative of where he's at right now; not nearly the same player who first broke in after signing.

He's had no playing time this year, a good run of games should see him back to his best - really not that far off Victor at all.

Loads of players will get abused ((100% the correct term here) by emenike, he is quite the handful.

Ribery has won the most hated personality in France this year that's at least one reward for him

Ribery is currently graded at 2.08 for his 12 Bundesliga caps this season by Kicker (Important German sports magazine, mainly on football). That's pretty insane by their standards. Best I've ever seen over any sort of sample.

That fact is completely useless without some sort of description of the grading system and distribution of scores.

Sort by X

Ribery is top.

I think it's just the journalists covering the games and their average-ratings handed out.
I've always looked at their ratings as part of building a bigger picture for potential candidates. Just to see who popular-opinion so to speak have doing very well. Especially when it comes to those "new" Bundesliga players that I haven't seen a lot. Now I don't think I've included someone based on it but at least it sometimes provide me with some new names for the radar. Of course with Kicker for whatever reason it's always seems to be the goalkeepers who have the best ratings. Fortunately you can sort by position though.

The list is progressing nicely btw. I have a new method that potentially could affect things quite a bit.

First I rate position-by-position. I've finished centrebacks, fullbacks and almost the big "other midfielders" category where I make sure that the internal order there is exactly how I want it. Then not until the end I'll mix all the different positions together.
All in all I think that will make it more accurate with less players held back, stopped somewhere on the list where they maybe shouldn't have been, by tricky comparisons to other positions.

Also, speaking of Bundesliga players I would be interesting in opinion or rating of these fullbacks:

One Christian Fuchs I know well and I've called him the Bundesliga's Leighton Baines in the past, which is a little flattering, since they'll be ranked miles apart (and Fuchs not really near the top 300 or even in the fullback top 40) it looks like but with him as my reference point does anyone have any opinion on Konstantin Rauch, Daniel Carvajal or maybe in general who the best fullbacks have been in Germany so far this season (apart from the big Bayern Dortmund names already on the list)? My research at least indicate that those two have been doing well but apart from reading about such things and looking at various whoscored stats I don't really have any good impression of them.

Now that we're on it I'd also be interested in any opinions on some of the latest Dutch fullbacks:

Van Rhijn and Jetro Williams I know somewhat seeing them a few times and consider them very attacking with some flaws as well here and there but then there is a guy like Bruno Martins Indi who seems interesting. Not least because he also plays centreback (and done well I think?) but looks to have won the national team left-back starting job?

Finally I would be interested in anything on some of the emerging Japanese stars in the Bundesliga like Hiroshi Kiyotake and Takashi Inui. I'm pretty sure I've confused them in one of my early impressions but I THINK it was the Frankfurt guy who really impressed me and who I've also heard was praised a lot. But not totally confident. Either way unless people come in here and confidently declare one of them superstars I don't think I'll include either since I like to keep guessing at a minimum but I'm still curios in them and actually in the best Japanese players in general (apart from Kagawa, Honda and maybe Nagatomo), so if anyone has anything step forward please

I rate Fuchs very highly, hes easily a class above Rausch.

Hes very good going forward, strong crosses and set pieces, but has his problems defensivly.
Id put him above Schmelzer (maybe biased, i hate this guy) but obv behind pisczec and lahm.

Ok just a final update before the real thing..

I'm very close to done and have finished the following:

Top 50 left and right-backs
Top 50 central defenders
Top 100+ Midfielders
Top 100 Attacking Midfielders/Wingers
Top 100 Forwards

The overall 300 best players in the world is also pretty close to final and going much quicker this time with all the various internal order (position-by-position) done beforehand.

What I still think I'll do is post each positional list individually with various player comments along the way and this time let that be the main presentation so to speak. It is much less abstract in many ways than the 300-overall thing with many players that are tough to compare in different positions. Though granted that within the positions there are definitely different player-types-roles-etc that are still very difficult to match up against each other, but overall, for good and bad, I think it's easier for anyone reading either feeling for or very against different placings.

So I can almost start at any point now. Unfortunately the coming days this week I don't think any normal Euro-hours will be good for me but rather than delaying things further I might just start very early at some point or even very late (which is good U.S time), so watch out for that.

Pretty sure this is a moot request Bjorn, but for the newbies amongst us, if you could label players with team/national affiliations, it'd be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to the education.

Oh

Looking forward to this!

let's go then!

Bjørn, my man, I think this new way of ranking will be a huge success.

So, why not throw us a bone today?

Will do. Thanks for the interest!

Excellent

Thanks, I think it will be good too. Though it is still early days and I haven't yet finalized the always more difficult 200-300 placings, and I'm sure I'll be sick of the list in a few months, right now at least I think it's the best version so far that I'm the most happy with and a lot of that is probably doing the positions first.

I'm planning to stay awake and finish the 300 in the coming hours and I really don't think it will take long, it's gone very smoothly, then I might just feel frisky enough to start, say the fullbacks rundown afterwards.

The OP also needs some fixing.

Thanks for the effort put into doing this. I can't overstate how much this is appreciated by those who follow this thread.

The new ranking system should be interesting too.

There's definitely a few players that I expect could have significant movement from the last ranking:

Fernandinho, Oscar, Willian, Dembele, Sandro to name a few.

Plus possible new entries:

Osvaldo, Lamela, Baines, De Bruyne.

Despite a high ranking of 22 for Falcao, I wonder if his performances this season will bump him up further. Same goes for Mata (32), Müller (45) and whether RVP (10) can break the top 5.

I'm interested in the full backs from the premiership going to be quite hard to rate them going by form this season.

I'm ready to jump at Bjorn for ranking Matuidi too low.

He'll almost certainly make the list this time round. Expect to be disappointed with position though.

Anything but a top 10 spot and i'll be outraged

Spotting the players who have fallen the most down the list is also always pretty entertaining.

Nani and Rooney (relatively) come to mind. So does Sneijder. And, sadly, Villa might too.

Also interesting to see where Bjørn, a Juve fan, will place Llorente.

there might be no czech players on the list, how have we fallen

All right, this time it really is (finally) done. Everything from the big 300 list to the various positions.

I only have a few hours coming up, tomorrow cold be much better, but I might as well get slowly started anyway (who knows how long this will end up taking), and I'm thinking "Forwards" will be first to go.

It's a category that will only have a little bit of positional overlap from the attacking midfielders/wingers, players like Walcott, Giovinco, Müller, Reus, even Totti this time around are notables that come to mind and generally speaking getting decently ranked in two different categories is definitely something that helps the overall placing on the 300 list.

And of course it's worth noting that with these players and others who overlap, there will be many examples where they're behind some people on the "Forwards" positional rank that they're then ahead of on the 300 overall players list.