Thought he was about our best player over 90 minutes, with Lovren putting in a similarly important performance. His crossing and free kicks were our major threats today and if Lambert had have been on form my previous criticism of him would have looked even more stupid.
He has to play a string of bad games to be dropped now but that said I don't think he is in our best XI. As part of the front 4 he possesses a very good cross, protects the fullback, presses and he can keeps possession well but I feel he limits the effectiveness of the other attackers as he doesn't offer an outlet for an attacking pass, he doesn't possess a good enough attacking pass and he isn't proficient enough at the interplay that we are so good at. In the first half jwp looked the most threatening but I feel that he was also limiting the threat of lallana, and rodriguez, not so much lambert who he fed about 7 good crosses, but he would also benefit from a better attacking option at times.
When jwp played in the schneiderlin role we looked much better as a team and I feel this is where he is also best. His high energy harassment and short accurate passes are at home here. It takes away crossing from his game but in the second half ramirez put in a good cross to lambert, and osvaldo put in a brilliant cross to rodriguez so we still were a threat from crosses. He needs to bulk up and I feel he is too slow on the ball to really challenge wanyama, schneiderlin or cork in this position but he is a more than adequate back up.
Osvaldo, Ramirez, Lambert, Lallana, and Rodriguez are all much better players and will assert their superiority as the season progresses if they are indeed superior.