Player Ratings

forgot to add this to my post match r/v

it will be 5 star system:
1 star = very poor
2 stars = poor
3 stars = did a job
4 stars = good
5 stars = extremely good

van der sar (gk): 3 stars
did a job, nothing spectacular. saved 1/7 penalties, turned out to be the winning save. looked shaky with corners and a few poor clearances. I love the winning save how he pointed to his left goal post and dived right! hilarious, putting that one more doubt in anelka's head probably did a little bit.

brown (rb): 4 stars
sure he put the cross in for the goal, but it was scholes' flick that made space for him, and it was ronaldo that beat essien for that goal. attacking wise he was fair, but defensively he was huge. malouda did nothing!

vidic (cb): 4 stars
huge, monster of a player. i love the guy. absolutely crushed drogba, mentally and physically.

ferdinand (cb): 4 stars
good game for him. together with vidic nullified the attacking threat of drogba. intersting that he got away with fly kicking joe cole in the head. i think if cole had of gone down maybe the ref would have given it. appart from that scare a solid performance from the lad.

evra (lb): 4 stars
together with ronaldo he demolished the right sided defense of joe cole and essien. went missing a bit in the second half but still did a job.

hargraves (rm): 4 stars
great great effort and performance. could have improved on his corners. but his cool penalty kick might put him in the running over ronaldo to be first choice penalty taker.

carrick (cm): 3 stars
did a job, tracked back well. too many long balls though. also didn't take the open goal that was given to him. he needs to be more leathal from outside the box. everyone knows he strikes the ball well. just needs some killer instinct.

scholes (cm): 3 stars
did a good job, great flick to open up brown for the cross. justified SAF choice to start him.

ronaldo (lm): 4 stars
good performance from the kid. he would have been on 5 stars in the 1st half but went missing in the second half and to top that off missed his penalty. he was looking like a top class player in the first half. essien had no answers to the questions he was asking. all the attack came from going down the line and yielded the best results. tevez should have buried his cross in the first half.

I must also say that in the second half he should have cut inside more, and be more selfish. they were onto his touchline hugging ways, and they knew he would be looking for the run of evra. he needed to take a few more shots. normally i don't encourage this, but u got to keep ur opponent guessing.

rooney (cf): 2 stars
i hate to give such a poor rating to my favourite player but he was pretty ineffective. afterall he had 0 shots on goal. his showed some class in the first half by recieving some long balls, not bad for a medium height (at best) cf. he also did some good wing play, creating another golden chance for tevez. i think SAF should have taken him off at about 65-70 mins, but rooney told him 5 more minutes and ended up giving him a lot more.

i think with rooney it's a confidence issue. ur the center forward, ur allowed to have some shots, who cares if u miss, ur bloody brilliant! i think it was soccernet podcast that compared him with alan smith. i hope that never happens. rooney has loads of talent, come on kid!

tevez (cf): 3 stars
great running from the argentine, poor finishing though. that is what worries me about our cf combination. they are great great team players, but finishing needs some improving. well on the plus side these guys will only improve.

giggs (winger): 2 stars
when giggs came on hargraves went into the middle to partner carrick as effectively 2 DMs. giggs went to rm, didn't do too much. put a goldern opportunity into terry's head. converted his penalty but was ultimately quiet.

nani (winger): NA
came on in extra time and didn't have time to do anything really. put away his penalty though

anderson (cm): NA
can't rate him either, had like 2 mins to play. put away his penalty. i really like this kid and should have been given more time. esp the way chelsea midfielders were dominating.