My Newcasle United Player Ratings vs Chelsea (Away)

Player Ratings

Tim Krul (7) - Did very little wrong and unfortunately could do nothing about both their goals. Dived the right way for the penalty though.

Danny Simpson (6) - Defended reasonably well but was poor going forward. So far he has attempted 8 crosses and only 1 of them have found a teammate. Was therefore substituted in the second half.

Steven Taylor (7) - Looked fairly solid at the back although Chelsea seemed to drop down a few gears in the second half.

Fabricio Coloccini (7) - Had a busy first half, marking Torres but considering this was his first start of the season he did fairly well.

Davide Santon (6.5) - Decent enough game from him although he hardly had the chance to go forward in the first half. Did better in the second half.

Vurnon Anita (6) - Struggled at times in the game and gave away the penalty at a point where we were doing fairly well. Will learn from it I'm sure and he did do some good things as well. I remember him winning a few tackles.

Yohann Cabaye (6.5) - Had a better game than he did last week, however his set pieces were poor. It was the one area we could have had an advantage over Chelsea but that unfortunately did not happen.

Jonas Gutierrez (6.5) - Worked hard but did not influence the game as much as we know he could.

Hatem Ben Arfa (7.5) - Was our most dangerous player and showed many glimpses of his class. We needed him to see more of the ball in the final third if we wanted to get something out of the game which hardly happened.


Demba Ba (6.5) - Was more involved than Papiss Cisse but only really had two chances in the whole match. He should have scored with the chance towards the end but Cech seemed to guess right when a goal looked certain.

Papiss Cisse (6) - Has had a poor start to the season but then again he has hardly had chances in front of goal. He generally is not involved in build up play that much so if he is not given chances he is very ineffective on the field. Should probably have been substituted but we did not have a striker on the bench!

Substitutes
Ryan Taylor (7) - Did not do too badly when he came on. Set up Ba with a nice header at the back post and also made one notable clearance in the box.

Sylvain Marveaux (6) -  Had one or two nice touches but did not see much of the ball in the 15 minutes he was on for.

James Perch (7) - Did well when he came on.

Newcastle United Man of the Match - Hatem Ben Arfa