Anfield Banter Awards for November

My player of the month was Sami Hyppiä. I'm so glad I disabled comments because I can only imagine the garbage spewing from the mouths of those who have their own opinion. If you are one of those who know better, than I have a suggestion, start your own blog. Anyhow, here's the rest of the awards.

Unsung hero of the month
Well, I sort of shot myself in the foot on this one by naming Hyppiä as player of. Let me see, Carragher is certainly a candidate, as is Yossi, who seems no matter how well he plays gets little recognition, but I'm going to have to go with Javier Mascherano. The Argentine was instrumental in shutting down our opposition in the four matches he played and improved drastically from our previous matches with Beşiktaş and Porto. Not to mention he had to go to South America and back to play two matches for his home country.

Bench player of the month
Easy, Ryan Babel. In his three appearances as a sub, he scored three goals, utilizing his skill and pace to punish our opponents. Funny enough, he failed to net in his two starts. For now, Babel clearly is best suited coming on in the 60th minute.

Goal of the month
We scored 17 goals in five matches this past month, so there's plenty to choose from. I think I've got it down to five though. From the Beşiktaş match, Babel's first goal where he cleverly deflected a ball from Benayoun off the inside of his foot and Gerrard's nasty swerving blast in the box after receiving a cheeky back heel from Voronin, Gerrard's nasty free kick in the Newcastle tie, and finally both goals by Torres in the Porto match. The thing is, all of these goals have one thing in common, they were all team efforts, so I'll let you to decide for yourself. If I had a gun to my head though, I'd take Babel's first goal against Beşiktaş, only because it was a great announcement of the kind of talent the young Dutch forward possesses.

Assist of the month
Again, some great ones to choose from: Benayoun to Babel and Voronin to Gerrard against Beşiktaş, Kewell to Torres against Porto, and three corners from Gerrard to various players. I'm gonna have to go with the back heel by Voronin to a streaking Gerrard though, the whole play was just a thing of beauty.

On-loan player of the month
Hey, it's not Paul Anderson this time, even though the Swansea winger had another great month, playing in seven matches and scoring twice. No, this month's award goes to Danny Guthrie, who played in all but 16 minutes for Bolton while helping them go unbeaten for the month. Yes, you read that right, Bolton didn't lose in five matches in November, going 1-4-0. Only one win, but it was against Man U. Guthrie has proven a solid contributor to the side which makes me wonder what his future holds, our midfield is already cluttered as it is.

That's it for today... probably, but I'll be back tomorrow with my daily and a 'What will Rafa do?' for the Bolton match. Godspeed.