Ratings

[the_khl]

It was a great game actually. Almost end to end stuff.

I think a lot of poster are beeing to harsh on the youngsters. Plessis looked very decent in the first half and Spearing was very energetic.

You've got to sympathize with the players they made a good game of it and almost got their equalizer. Even Voro-neen looked like a footballer at times.

Babel was probably once again the most dissapointing player to me. Looked marginally better when played as a striker.

 

[mark1975]

I thought it was a good game too, Degen, Voronin, Insua (at least attacking wise), N'Gog and Kuyt all played well. I thought we lost the game in midfield though with the 'no outlet' approach of having Plessis and Spearing there who were overran and inept when in possession.

I don't want to be too hard on the lads, but I've not really seen anything in either of them to suggest they will amount to much, I hope I'm wrong though.

And Babel, well what can you say after that? Excuse with (a lack of) confidence? A lack of games? Or finally just conclude that for whatever reasons, he's just not good enough. Whatever portion of the blame people want to put on Benitez for his lack of progress, he's still woefully inept in possession and runs into traffic, rather than having the intelligence to look up and assess what's going on, and show the brains to either slow down and hold the ball up waiting for support, or play the ball, or shoot. He seems incapable of most of those things and terrible at deciding which one to go for, at the right time.