Leicester 2 – 2 MAN CITY – PLAYER RATINGS
10 Jan
Hart - Made a number of important saves including a spectacular stop from a close-range header, but was culpable for the Leicester equaliser when he spilled a cross and gifted the home side a goal. Looked to distribute the ball quickly - 6
Boateng – I was impressed with him the first half but was truly dreadful in the second period. Looks a shadow of his self at the World Cup - 5
K. Touré – Troubled greatly by the pace of Vassell and struggled in the aerial battles. Missed the authority of Kompany - 5
Lescott - For me, was the pick of the defenders. Dealt with Vassell far better than Kolo Touré and was positionally very good. But also didn’t command in the air - 6.5
Kolarov - Defensively, he is a huge liability. Caught out of position so many times it was embarrassing. Looks very slow and cumbersome but does possess a belter of a left foot. Took a couple of dangerous corners - 5
SWP - One of those players that needs a run of games in the side otherwise he looks dreadful. Struggles to produce his best at short notice and is was actually quite sad to see a former City star perform like he did - 4
Milner - By a country mile, City’s best performer. Had the energy and drive in midfield and scored a great goal, his first for the club. Did both his defensive and offensive duties with aplomb. Performs far better in the middle. In my opinion, worth a go instead of Yaya Touré in the first team - 8
Vieira - From the early moments when the pitch was cutting up, it was clear that this would not be Paddy’s day. Struggled to impose his tempo upon the game and visibly tired towards the end as the heavy pitch took its toll - 5
A. Johnson - Usually offers a high class outlet on the wing, someone who takes on defenders and creates chances. Did that on a couple of occasions but not frequently enough - 6
Tévez - Tried his best but didn’t have his greatest of games. He needs to learn that when he is playing up front on his own (something that hopefully won’t happen often in the future after the arrival of Edin Dzeko) he can’t afford to drop to the halfway line because it leaves us with no-one up front - 6
Jo - I’ve given this rating a lot of thought and many of you will disagree with it but I felt he was genuinely appalling. Has shown signs of improvement this season but last couple of games have seen the worst in him reappear. Didn’t win one header, didn’t have enough ability to bring others into play and generally loped around the park with no desire - 2
Subs
De Jong – Added calmness to our midfield and helped to stifle the midfield area, where much of Leicester’s threat was coming from. Had one superb opportunity to score, but saw his shot saved. From my angle at the game and having not been able to see a replay, I’m not sure whether it was a bad shot or a good save, but won’t have many better chances to break his goalscoring duck - 7
Zabaleta – Was introduced in place of Jo to give us added impetus but didn’t see enough of the ball to impact play - 6
Only two wordsneed to be said about Jo and that performance yesterday: Bloody Awful.
Have to agree about Jo.
Why does Mancini play him?
Can’t think of anyone who would be worse. In fact I think we’d be better starting with 10 men!
I believe 2 is a very generous rating for Jo. Every single player on the pitch had a much better performance than Jo. He is one player that should definitely leave the club.
‘troubled greatly by the pace of Vassel’. The most extraordinary sentence I’ve read for ……well a very long time.
You will not get any arguments from me for rating Jo a two. The guy is a liability and I think Mancini must be playing him in the hope there is a talent-blind and desperate manager out there who actually thinks he has some attributes. He is totally clueles in most games in at this level and seemed to be stopping Tevez from playing his game rather than helping him. I do think he could do a job for someone but I don’t think B + Q are taking on the moment.
I must disagree with your score of 2 for Jo……..I find this a ridiculous rating to give a player after his performance. I think a much more realistic score would be 0.25………YES a quarter of a point and that is for keeping me amused with his diving when blown on; his “thumbs-up” to players who give him long balls that he never gets to and his hair cut! HE HAS BEEN USELESS SINCE HE ARRIVED – PLEASE PLEASE GET RID!
The funny thing is that he has stated he wants to stay and fight for his place! Mancini should play one of our Youth from academy instead of him or at least put Micheal Johnson (though he is not an striker, he would definitely would do a much better job)
You gave Jo two marks too many. It baffles me what Mancini sees in him. He must score bucket loads in training. It’s in our tradition to have a muppet on the pitch just like sun jihai, vassell etc. This fella is the worst of the lot. He’ll never be a footballer as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse. I despair every time I see his name on the team sheet.
Everyone knows that the only reason Mancini has been playing Jo was to prove to the management that he needed to buy another Striker. Now that we have finally sealed the deal with Dzeko we will never see Jo playing again. That is the only logical explanation for ever having Jo on the field
“Everyone knows that the only reason Mancini has been playing Jo was to prove to the management that he needed to buy another Striker. Now that we have finally sealed the deal with Dzeko we will never see Jo playing again. That is the only logical explanation for ever having Jo on the field”
However, this is City. Who knows what will happen. Dzeko will probably go straight in .. on the bench for the reserves.
I think, on the possible replacements for Jo front, that Roque deserves a chance. He may only be on one leg, have lost an arm and be blind – but he’ll still be better than Jo.
Spot on. Jo was tepid. And Beller’s is at Cardiff! And Milner would thrive in his prefered midfield role as we have seen in this game and the europa league. However that would raise the issue of dropping a 2,000 grand a week player to the bench for that to happen.
Im going to defend Kolarov….the only reason he was caught out of position was either because ….
1.) SWP left him with two men to makr having done nothing in the game, so Kol went to one man, the Leicester guy gave it to the other and this Kolarov got blamed for it
or…
2.) He’d made a superb run up the line, Vieira failed to give it to him, and instead gave it to a Leicester player and the counter was on leaving Kol too much work to get back in time.
Therefore Kolarov gets the stick which other players should receive, notably the left winger….
That is the end of the defence case