By Myles Palmer
The big Latvian stopper, who wears the No 3 shirt, cruised through a promising Premiership debut in the 6-1 demolition of lethargic Leicester.
His positional play was good. His passing was good. His heading was very good.
Stepanovs had an assist on Ljungberg’s goal. The Swede ran away without thanking him, but Tony Adams took the trouble to express his approval for the header against the post which created the goal.
The new man’s only shaky moment came when the score was 0-0 after 15 minutes.
Adams had the ball on the left side and Izzet chased him, so he passed the ball sharply back to Stepanovs, who miscontrolled it.
Akinbiyi was on him in a flash, got the ball, wrestled the big guy to the ground (he was off-balance) and fired in a shot which Manninger parried.
The flag went up and free kick was given for a foul by the striker. Adamshad raced back but was a fraction too late to reach Akinbiyi before he got the shot in.
It was a tight pass, which asked a lot of a man making his debut, and Adams realised he had played a risky ball. But it was encouraging to see that the skipper thought that the Latvian was good enough to deal with his backpass AND with Akinbiyi’s challenge.
That might tell us more about the potential of Stepanovs than the rest of the match.
Will he keep his place and face Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips on Saturday?
I hope so.
27 December 2000.