Fair enough mate. I've been called out on my player ratings before and there is probably a case for marking everyone down one in all of my reports at times. Morrison got an 8 because he made one goal and scored another. If he hadn't shown his class in the last 15 minutes, including that brilliant chip, he would have had a 6. I agree that he needs to cut out the diving and I meant to mention it. Carroll had a hand in 3 of the goals and I thought he easily had his best game for us. I thought Henry did the job of receiving the ball deep and playing it out very well indeed. This allowed Carroll to play further forward and link up with Morrison, Austin and BZ. So even though someone plays well throughout and makes 3 goals, you still wouldn't give them an 8?
Don't know Clint's injury position, but since no one has ruled him out for the season, hopefully he'll be back for the p.o's
Good report Col. I thought Benny and Tom both had probably their best games for us but wasn't that after they had an out and out defensive midfield on the pitch to cover them ? Entertaining game but the score massively flattered us, lets hope this starts a wave.
Yep, I agree that Henry was a superb foil for Carroll. Mind you, I thought Carroll was playing well with Jenas, who was playing very well. That's not to say that such an open central midfield would have worked throughout.
Surely Carroll had to push up field once Jenas went off, we wouldn't want Henry trying to do that; I'm pretty certain that he was touted as an attacking midfielder when we signed him. The injury to Jenas did completely unbalance us. I assume that Kranjcar didn't have 75 minutes in his legs and so we needed a re-shuffle.
Good report but isn't 5 for Jenas a bit lowish? If you really think he was on his way to be Man of Match (rating 8 - 9), dropping it to 5 just for getting injured seems a bit harsh. I don't think there was anything he could have done about it, he was just rushed back too quick after earlier injury. Otherwise mostly agree with your observations.
Jenas only played about 13 minutes mate. He got 5 because of that, not because he got injured, which he obviously didn't do intentionally. If he had carried on for the rest of the game the way he was playing prior to his injury, I think he could well of been MOTM.
It's probably fair to say that I'm still struggling to see beyond TC's weaknesses. What I do know is that at the start of the season we had a whole plethora of players (including Carroll) involved in building from the back and stroking the ball around in midfield. But for many games now there has been a vast gap in that area around the centre circle making it much easier to break up our play when the ball goes forward and allowing the counter attack. In recent games we have even seen the unlikely figure of Dunne regularly carrying the ball across that space because there was no one available to link up the play.
