Liverpool Man Of The Match Poll.

[den]

As a move away from the MOTM poll being merged with the match preview, we can try running it seperately.

[ABBEY]

you need another today.....nobody

[chocky]

Santa Cruz only because he scored a belting goal...That was one of the worst performances this season..

[tcj_jones]

From now on could we have a "no suitable option" box to tick?

I don't think anybody was better than anybody else, but Santa Cruz did score a really good goal, so I guess he's more deservant than the others.

[John]

Really finding it hard to pick anyone.....

Yeah, Santa scored one, and also contributed to their first goal.

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

Agree with chocky.

[Lathund]

Nelsen for me. Excellent finish from Santa, but didn't do much else.

[AggyBlue]

I don't think we should be voting for a man of the match after that.

Perhaps Donkey of the match would be more apt.

[American Rover12]

Nelsen for me as well. The only player who seemed to have any idea what was going on and had some very good tackles.

[Alan75]

can we vote for the ball.

[Tim Southampton Rover]

Whoever voted for Samba is just as hilarious as his performance today.

Nelsen gets my vote.

Note to Hughes: Nelsen & Ooijer against Man Utd please!

[Fife Rover]

Quite difficult to vote for an overall MoM, on account of a non-event performance from the team as a whole. Individuals did make one or two stand-out contributions scattered about the match. In fact the impression I got was that although nobody played well throughout the game, by the same token, nobody played really badly throughout either. It was a strange one to judge.

The two strikers RSC and Roberts were obviously trying their best and looked good on rare occasions, but they had absolutely nothing coming to them from midfield for the vast majority of the match and hence nothing to feed off. Similarly the back four were mostly up against it all the time and did fairly well overall in coping, but again they were never able to get a grip on the game at any point and start to make things happen further forward. For me the major problem was a complete failure of the midfield as a whole to get to grips with their task and to make things happen either in an attack or defence (but less so in that respect).

Individuals that may be said to have stood out to a small degree were Freidel, Nelsen, Warnock, Roberts and RSC. That's about it really.

[iamarover]

Nelsen for me as well. The only player who seemed to have any idea what was going on and had some very good tackles.

Jesus, was the cross Pond disruption that bad? The guy is fecked. Totally and embarrassingly caught square time after time. Samba similarly disgracefully inadequate. This is the Premier League and those 2 are clearly not cutting it. Get rid in the summer and build again

[American Rover12]

Jesus, was the cross Pond disruption that bad? The guy is fecked. Totally and embarrassingly caught square time after time. Samba similarly disgracefully inadequate. This is the Premier League and those 2 are clearly not cutting it. Get rid in the summer and build again

Yes, I think for myself and apparently 10 others who voted, the game must have looked incredibly different from the one you saw. They really ought to do something about keeping their foreign market on the same page as their European counterparts.

[philipl]

I voted Nelsen. I thought he held the line pretty well and looked to be getting back to the sort of level of fitness and freedom of movement of old which is very encouraging.

I wish Samba would stop trying to man-handle people but he did prove a pretty considerable obstacle to the Liverpool forward line most of the match.

[Eddie]

How can 7 people vote for Santa Cruz when his poor play directly resulted in us going behind?

Voted for Friedel myself, I thought he was the only person in this game who really did ok. Dealt with most things pretty well and couldn't have done anything about the goals.

[grizfoot]

If Lee Grooby was on the list I'd have voted for him. He isn't so i'm pretty stuck.

[Tim Southampton Rover]

Lee will probably get a game next week going by todays performances!

[yorkblues]

samba very poor again

[Fife Rover]

Is there really any point in having this MoM poll every week? There are invariably an unbelievable set of differing opinions; so much so that it just seems to generate a whole lot of bickering and insult throwing posts.

I am not just saying this because any particular poster has a different opinion on any player or aspect of the match than myself; far from it, that is what a MB is all about, but every week we seem to get a considerable number of posts where people are not just differing in their opinions but are hurling insults (some of them very unpleasant) at each other as well. Is it really worth it?

[daveoftherovers]

How can 7 people vote for Santa Cruz when his poor play directly resulted in us going behind?

Voted for Friedel myself, I thought he was the only person in this game who really did ok. Dealt with most things pretty well and couldn't have done anything about the goals.

Eddie, more importantly, how could ANYONE vote for Samba, The man formerly known as MGP, Bentley, Vogel, Dunn or McCarthy, it's laughable!

[RibbleValleyRover]

If i was going to vote it would probably be Nelsen.

[JAL]

When Cruz gave the ball away for Liverpools goal almost the entire Rovers team were behind the ball defending so Cruz's misplaced pass should never have been a problem.

The whole team team have to take a good look at themselves, Gerrard plays a short pass around Vogel whose then seen trying to grab his shirt as he ghosts past him but he has the 'luxury' of Nelsen and Samba in front of him somehow Gerrard makes the three of them look like monkeys nutmegging Samba and ends up one v one with Friedel to score...embarrassing.

Cruz for me is abmonished because non of the Rovers players were in space to receive a pass and then they collectively showed little or no desire to fight to get the ball back form Liverpool which is even more damming....Mark Hughes needs to sort this out quickly or get out himself.

[Mozzer]

santa cruz made a mistake for the first goal-gave it away to easy..

nelsen made a mistake for the second goal..

mistakes cost us..

i dont understand why people are saying samba and nelsen had terrible games-i thought they handled arguably the best striker in the world very well..

emerton handled babel very well-who tore arsenal apart in mid week..

[BiggusLaddus]

The way I saw the game was that we had no attacking outlet at all and were being overrun in midfield. It was like a training game of attack v's defence, and after an hour of it the defenders started to get tired and a bit sloppy.

I thought we defended very well in the first half (apart from Samba's "foul"), but it was enivitable that we were not going to be able to hold out for the whole game.

If we had gone into the game with a packed midfield and Rocky up front on his own then we might have looked more in the game, but we'd still have probably lost it.

One annoying little thing that I noticed that we kept doing was that both of our fullbacks would check inside onto their weaker foot before hoofing a clearence upfield. Both of them did it several times when under pressure from Babel and Kuyt and it just looked like a daft risk to be taking to cut inside and hoof it to no one, when they could hve just put their boot through the ball first time.