Player Form and Live Condition Rating in PES 2021
Player "Form" and Konami's weekly "Live Condition Rating" are 2 important things to take into consideration when deciding which players to use before a game.
In a nutshell, these 2 factors help determining the color of the arrows players will display before a game. If they have the arrow up (blue color), they get boosted attributes. If their arrow is down (red color), they will perform poorly.
The big conclusion is that if you have many quality players in your squad, you should use as many A-condition players as possible. This also adds a bit of variety to the teams you will face every week.
If every player is in C-condition that week, you should go for versatile players that have a high "Form" attribute value, as they should display "normal" (yellow) arrows often.
Let's learn more about this.
Live Condition Rating
Condition Rating is usually updated weekly (every Thursday), assuming you're in the middle of a football season. When you load myClub, you will see the game's top players' condition for that week right away.
If your players had a good week in real life, they will witness a “Form upgrade” in PES myClub as well, via Condition Rating. This only applies to matches that occured in the weekend.
Condition Rating has 5 variants: A/B/C/D/E. A player who scores a hat-trick is pretty much guaranteed to be in A-condition for that week, while a player who was sent off will probably be in D-condition.
Players in Condition Rating of "A" will very likely have the arrow up for pretty match every game, every time you pick them.
It is unknown how much attributes are improved, since Konami hasn't mentioned this since the PES 6 guide book, back in 2006, but you can have a look at this chart for PES 2018 to have an idea of what to expect, provided they haven't changed it over the years.
In any event, one thing's for sure: this simply means your players should perform better than usual if they are playing with the arrow up.
If a player is injured in real life, he will be in Condition Rating of "C" until he gets back on the pitch (and sometimes in D-condition the week after the match they got injured). If you notice your player is in D-condition, you should avoid picking him, as he’s likely to have his arrow down for most games, resulting in poor performances.
Condition Rating of "C" is the default state, and the one most players will usually be in. If the competitions are paused, C-condition will be applied to all players.
Legends are the exception: they used to be just like the others, but Konami has decided to upgrade their Condition Rating to "B" after PES 2020 Data Pack 4, in February 2020.
The Form Attribute
You should also keep an eye on the “Form” attribute of each player, which is independent from what I mentioned above. To know your player's Form value, you can either check your player’s stats, or access PES DB. They range from 1 to 8.
See this as a "Consistency" metric. The higher the number, the more consistent they are - Messi and Ronaldo, who consistently perform well throughout the year, have 7, while a generic White Ball can have 3.
This means that Messi and Ronaldo will usually have their arrows in the middle for most matches (less fluctuation).
Inconsistent players are more unpredictable. They are more likely to have an arrow up or down, and are less likely to stay in the middle (more fluctuation).
This is backed by Japanese blogger Hanabi's findings; he tested how the "Form" stat of a player influences the probability of red/orange/yellow/green/blue arrows throughout 100 matches.
You can find a summary of his conclusions below.
The big takeaway from this test is that Form 7 or 6 might actually be the most desirable ratings. We can see there was strong likelihood of the player displaying the blue or green arrow.
The calculation "Form x Live Condition Rating" Konami performs is unknown, but if a player has a high form number and is in A-condition, you can be assured that he will perform with the arrow up almost every game.