Written by: Jonathan Lee

Despite a wonderfully brave and bright performance against the Champions elect, no points to show for it, and the team will need to be up for it again when a decent Southampton team visit us on Saturday – a team who often prefer playing on the counter attack away from home.

Fabianski – 5 oh dear, one of our more consistent performers over the last 18 months had a night to forget, a soft first goal, an embarrassing second, and a possibly rash decision in coming out for the third; nobody will need to tell him this cannot happen again as he will doubtless be more upset than anyone;

Ngakia – 7 this young lad looks to have some real potential and didn’t look out of his depth last night with some wonderful attacking play at times alongside his defensive duties, must surely keep the shirt on Saturday;

Diop – 7.5 another goal to his tally and looked more like the Diop that drew such rave reviews last season;

Ogbonna – 8.5 a tower at the back again and looked comfortably in control last night, didn’t deserve to be on the losing team;

Cresswell – 7 had another steady game but seems to run a bit out of steam around the 75 minute mark of late and happened again in this game when Liverpool started making headway down the right wing;

Rice – 8 full of energy and purpose, protected his back four ever so well, with Soucek potentially out for a while his contribution to the team on our run-in is going to be paramount;

Soucek – 8.5 marvellous first half sticking a leg in here there and everywhere, the stats showed he covered the most ground of any player on the pitch in the first half, sadly succumbed to injury early in the second half and early indications are we might not see him for a few weeks which would be a big blow;

Noble – 6 much better than his performance at City, and generally busy in the midfield, but let Sala free in the area for the second as got ball watching; unlucky with a late strike on goal;

Anderson – 6 did more in the first 15 minutes of the second half than he managed all first half in which he was very poor (possibly due to his 4 week absence through injury) bar one left wing burst late on, was probably a tad unlucky to be hooked off when he was;

Snodgrass – 6 you get a steady return from Snodgrass, plenty of effort, good set piece deliveries but never really hurt the opposition last night, one great run second half was completely missed by his team mates as he would have been clean through;

Antonio – 7.5 immense effort up front but not as effective when asked to fill in for Anderson at left wing after he’d been subbed, wonderful through ball for Bowen near the end deserved an equaliser;

Substitutes:

Fornals (47 mins for Soucek) – 7.5 a lot of supporters have been demanding he play and he looked up for it last night topped by a wonderful finish after a decent team move, must surely be a contender for starting on Saturday;

Haller (65 mins for Anderson) – 6 slightly controversial change as many thought his introduction took our momentum away with Antonio no longer pressing up front, had one shot straight at the keeper from a good position and made a couple of decent headed defensive clearances,  otherwise generally quiet;

Bowen (84 mins for Snodgrass) – 6.5 another brief outing but almost levelled the game when put clean through by Antonio, did little wrong with his shot but maybe could have taken it round the keeper, surely time to give him more match minutes as he looked lively and gives us something different in matches;