He was neither bad or good. Simply average performance. That's what you can see on those "quite solid ratings" (?) from German newspapers : 3/5 and 2,5/5. It is not exactly what I would call much praise.
Oh no you missunderstood it this time, those ones are like german school marks. Which means 1 is the best and 6 the worst. So a 2,5 and 3 is quite good.