Well, IMO there's the "good" group and the "bad" group.

Balo, Abate, de Jong, Mexes and Zapata were good. My vote goes to Zapata who was flawless.

The bad group includes Emo, Montolivo, Muntari.

Abbiati was tragic, yet my flop goes to Montolivo who has been poor overall this match, whereas Abbiati made one horrible howler, while making some good saves earlier on.

Really? Monto in the bad group?

He's still not at 100% but you can immediately tell when he's on the ball that he'll do something with it 95% of the time

I thought he was good, not great but still in the good category, had a moment or 2 when he made the wrong decision but it's still his first game and I expect his usual sharpness to kick in after 1 or 2 games

My votes MoM: SES, Flop: Muntari

I don't know, 95%? Yet he had a big chance near game end which he squandered without even trying anything. He's been mostly anonymous, making some passing mistakes. He simply joined the uninspired midfield, without giving any impression that he's capable of doing more.

Yup, Montolivo a flop for me too, not that I expected a Seedorf esque performance from him or anything. Maybe that arm band is clogging his head?

Monto was good in the first half, got tired too quickly in the second. He needs to gain match fitness. Anyway,

MoM - Zapata. As Fillipo said, flawless.
Flop - Abbiati. All those good saves mean nothing if you screw things up in the end.

Well that 5% goes to those moments where he made bad decisions like when he ran onto the ball and kept running in the box instead of shooting first time. But again, I think that this is something that comes with match fitness, everyone was making bad passing mistakes at some point, the only 2 that I don't remember doing so were Zapata and SES.

All in all I still think he made part of the good bunch, simply because our midfield wouldn't have even functioned minimally if he played as badly as you're saying, he was still the only one who managed to move the ball around in the first half for example when all the others were constantly losing it

IMO doing the minimum is not enough to be good. Especially when you are the sole creative force and the team captain. Yes, he managed to move the ball - but he was unable to manage the team. The problem is: while Muntari and de Jong ain't capable of constantly creating and making good passes, Montolivo is. So when Muntari fails at this task, it's expected or normal. But it shouldn't be normal for Montolivo. So yes - if judged and compared with Muntari, Riccardo did good. But for creative players standards, he had a poor game. Poli brought in more vividness and spirit then Monty had all game long.

But that is not Monto's game.

I've had this discussion with someone in the Serie A thread, and I said that Poli simply cannot be used as Monto's alternaive because they're completely different players. Monto is crucial for us because he dictates our game, Poli is simply not that. Think of it this way, if Monto is what Xavi is to Barca, Poli is Iniesta .i.e he makes runs and quick one-twos, gets into forwards areas, etc. Monto is simply not that. So it's pointless to talk about them in a comparative context, personally I think BOTH should be playing but with Allegri I wouldn't count on it happening any time soon.

I understand what you're saying in regards to what our expectations of Monto should be, but I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt for this game because he's clearly not at 100%, and I took that into consideration when I said that I thought his performance fell into the good category

I wasn't able to see the game but I agree with this logic, it's easy for a goalie to look bad with a mistake, whereas midfielders errors aren't so costly.

I think someone confused the MOTM & Flop.

Why else would Muntari be the MOTM?!?!

There's someone on this forum who always votes for Muntari as MoM, just to troll with us. I don't know who it is, though.

Sully himself...

It's han.

Caught me red handed