Ming - 6 - sod all to do really bar one excellent save .. oh no that was Lloris in the later match, my mistake. No he had feck all to do.
Moreno - 6 - can't blame him for being out-muscled by the boy-monster Lukaku. Love his pace and determination but does need to time his tackles a little better at times.
Lovern - 7.5 - thought he had an excellent game, moving out of defence into midfield to hold up potentially dangerous attacking breaks before returning to CB when the danger had passed or our midfield had got back.
Skrtel - 6.5 - did what he had to do unspectacularly.
Manquillo - 6.5 - had his hands full with first Moralis an then Baines/McGeady but coped pretty well. One superb run deserved to have set up a goal.
Gerrard - 7 - substantial improvement in movement, the same range of good to excellent passing and a good goal, even though Howard should have saved it. FKs were off today.
Henderson - 6.5 - I didn't see what others seem to have seen today, a couple of very good passes and the usual harrying aside. Made a couple of defensive errors that on another day could have had repercussions.
Markovic - 4 - he isn't a winger so we should stop playing him there. He looked much better when BR moved him more centrally at HT, he looked far more confident there. Still, he isn't as good as our other options there. Whether he just hasn't settled/matured yet I don't know so we need to give him lots of time. Obviously BR is seeing something in training that isn't translating into match day performances.
Lallana - 8 - another big, following up on last week, 'feck You' to his detractors. Brilliant feet, running down defenders all day long (his kms per match stats are similar to Henderson's) and as someone else said, the perfect description of him is the 'White Sterling', though maybe not at that level yet ! It is very frustrating though, that without runners - you can see him looking for them - a lot of his effort is going to waste. He could be brilliant with Studge and Sterling up front.
Sterling - 7.5 - Another excellent performance. Good tracking back and defence and once he had the ball at his feet was always looking to make things happen.
Balotelli - 6 - I want to give him more, at times his effort was excellent, at others far less so. At times I thought he was going to blow one through the net, at others he was wasteful. And then there were those two misses, misses that cost us 2 points and him 1.5 points on his score.
Coutinho - 7 - slick passing, vision. tricky feet and a much improved performance. Every time we drop him he seems to come back like this, I just wish he could sustain it.
BR - 5 - I'm marking him down because a) he didn't go with the 2 up front (Balo & Sterling) I wanted to see to have the fast striker-on-the-shoulder that Lallana & Couninho needs, and b) because he inanely started Markovic over Suso or Coutinho. At least he saw the error of his ways after 56 mins but that was too late and I think that decision cost us 2 points.
Overall, a much improved performance, more akin to the Spurs match, unlucky not to get a cast-iron penalty and to lose 2 points to a hail-Mary, but worldly, strike in injury time. If we play like this from now on (but with Studge replacing Markovic in the team) we'll win more often than not.
Match was live here on both Astro and Star.
