My Player Ratings

Marshall:10- What can you say? The best keeper in our history? Certainly in (my) living memory at least! Motd for me.

Fabio: 8 - Solid start, perhaps not match fit and also still looks like he needs a bit of time to bed in and gel with the team. Will see him on the left next time?

Caulker: 8 - Looking a little shaky for me on occasion - did his best but could have done better on a few occasions. 

Turner: 8 - Same as Caulker 

John: 8 - Is growing and growing, still feel as though he is still a little too green to hold down a regular starting place

Noone: 7 - Busy first half but got quieter as the game went on, not on par with his last outing but thank goodness we weren't so reliant on his ability alone today. 

Mutch - 9 What a player. Absolutely superb today. Thinking his substitution was purely tactical. 

Medal- 9 Played amazing - only gave the ball away once I think, from what I could see, and was a bloody nuisance to any norwich players hovering the middle.

Whitts: 7 - Poor Whittingham. Didn't do a whole lot wrong but was completely uninspiring, always passing backwards too. Perhaps Ole was also cross about the freekick just before him coming off - have to feel for him really. Would love to see Whitts of old again. 

Bellamy: 8 - looks much better in the middle of the park. His passing ability is still crap imo. 

Jones: 9 - Great debut - held the ball up well, won headers, particularly when defending corners and his composure was superb to take his goal. A hundreds more use to us that odemthingie. 

Zaha - Honourable mention, looked very dangerous when he first came on. I would like the team distribute more to him - perhaps they have just use to passing down the left to Noonie for all our build up play. We now have dangerous options down both wings! 


What does everyone else think?

I agree, but id drop Fabio a point because he seemed to take half a year to get up to speed, much of our early struggles were compounded by him.

Based purely on that evidence, we should be lining up against Swansea EXACTLY how we did the second half.

Fabio and Noone need to get on the same wavelength asap. Both excellent getting forward, but they need to be aware of what the other is doing defensively. First game together, so I hope they will sort that side of things out PDQ.

fabio will definitely be our first choice RB. KTC was awful when he came on today....seems to have lost his way somewhere.....

I agree with a lot of that but Whitts was truly awful and couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo. There was approval all round when he was hooked -4.
Turner wasn't a huge amount better and looked shaky throughout. -5.
Zahra deserves a good mark because he was always dangerous and often had 2 men trying to stop him. Made the first goal - 8
Medel ran Marshall close for M of the M. Superb throughout. -9

Turner and Whitts - 4

I think all of the ratings need to come down by 2 or 3 points.

Let's not get carried away, we had a good 10min spell, and were battered for the rest of the game.
Yes, there were positives, but there were many, many, negatives as well.

I don't know about that I'd say they had the last 20 minutes but that aside we played well. Their goal was almost against the run of play

Stewells is right, let's not get too excited about a game we should of lost based on the first half and last twenty minutes. We need to improve, a lot. Gaining the confidence from winning will work towards that, but it's still a rocky road ahead.

Give me 17th on goal difference at the end of the season and is bite your hand clean off.

We just looked short of confidence that's all. We defended too deep after we went ahead but we looked good on the ball, retained possession and had a bit more threat about us. It's really early days but it was exactly the result we needed against a decent team who have a lot of good players and are better than us on paper. Some things to work on but we are getting better

Slumdog's Son™ wrote:We just looked short of confidence that's all. We defended too deep after we went ahead but we looked good on the ball, retained possession and had a bit more threat about us. It's really early days but it was exactly the result we needed against a decent team who have a lot of good players and are better than us on paper. Some things to work on but we are getting better

Exactly the result we need I agree, but it's not the end of our problems. If Marshall had a bad day we would of been hammered, and that needs to be addressed. Confidence might solve it, but we don't want to be convincing ourselves that it's all sweetness and light from here on in.

Of course not but our two problems are that Turner and Whitts are playing very, very poorly. Replace them and things will change

SteWells wrote:I think all of the ratings need to come down by 2 or 3 points.

Let's not get carried away, we had a good 10min spell, and were battered for the rest of the game.
Yes, there were positives, but there were many, many, negatives as well.

  
Pretty much one-way traffic for the last 30 mins or so.
Needed to retain the ball in midfield but kept losing it cheaply.

Turner wasn't that bad I thought. There was a difficult swirling wind to deal with and Elmander can be a handful. He wouldn't want to see a replay of Snodgrass nut-megging him again though.

Can I also use this post to say what a c*nt Jonas Gutierrez is.

Gutierrez amazed me with how frequently a big guy can fall over...

Red614 wrote:Stewells is right, let's not get too excited about a game we should of lost based on the first half and last twenty minutes. We need to improve, a lot. Gaining the confidence from winning will work towards that, but it's still a rocky road ahead.

  

That said, I think the tweaks to the squad have given it a much better balance and at least OGS has got material to work with. If we have the confidence to play on the front foot against teams, then I don't think the defence will be that much of a problem.

The trouble yesterday was that we started with two newbies in the side, who will need time to bed in. Zaha was also on before half time and all three, woefully short of match practice, were running on empty in the latter part of the second half. You can't carry three players and expect not to lose the initiative.

Swansea will be very interesting.............I am strangely confident........  

Yes I feel that we should get at least a point from the game. Although their poor run does have to end at some point and I do think they have some very good players