He did his job brilliantly today but he had to do his thing far too often, because the midfield as a whole was far too deep for the majority of the game. Really De Jong is the kind of player you shouldn't notice all that much if your collective midfield has a degree of control on the game, but ours didn't.
Still, De Jong's performance today was another example of why he's so important in these big games, because his destructive work was tremendous.
On a side note I saw someone before saying that Bridge was awful today, not sure which thread. My response would be that considering he has been out for 5 games and came back into a 1-on-1 duel with Valencia, I thought he did really well today and by and large quelled his threat, and did his best to support Bellamy, who in my eyes was slightly disappointing today. He didn't really seem to have that edge about him that he usually has.