Chrysalis

Yeah I am not necessarily saying he is good enough, just he is our best defender.

My point is people just concentrate on errors, and ignoring other aspects of gameplay, they see us concede a goal, look at the last player involved our side, and boom that person is a bad player.

You want us to drop our best defender?

Straight up question, which is the better player. Player A out of 200 attempted clearances 197 cleared, 3 errors. Player B out of 5 attempted clearances 3 cleared, 2 errors. Player B right because less errors?

Stats dont lie though, from watching us this season I have felt he was our best defender, constantly getting us out of pickles, but its all ignored if something goes wrong as everyone switches on a highlights of a goal looking for the defender to blame. The defence is getting battered nearly every game because of no midfield. But people are not paying attention to that part of the game.

Just found something really interesting, knowing that we have no quality in midfield and our defense is pounded every game, I wondered which defender in the entire EPL has made the most clearances this season so had a look. Of course people ignore this. Logically if you getting battered every game, goals will be conceded. https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/players/total_clearance

Also reported to be one who respected Cooper till the end as any professional should have done.

Absolutely, remember its all televised as well so make some signs for the cameras also, stick a letter under your jacket on the way in.

Yep, West Ham have just had a miserable game, but still cant see us beating them, hopefully we do though, as ultimately I always want us to win.

Wow so only 3 league games until the next break and only 2 back to back. League needs massively expanding or play each other 4 times.

Teams parking the bus is probably what every manager dreams off, it gives your team free roam of the pitch as the other team is frit of you, those teams parking the bus made us look better than what we were, the teams that didnt do it caused us some big problems. I get your point about the players working together as a team, and you seem to think Cooper massively under performed which is an opinion you have the right to have, but on the other hand, we have the 3rd lowest squad value in the league, spent the least out of the promoted 3 teams, and can see lots of quality issues, we are unable to play the same way as our opponents because to be frank we not good enough, and some are having a very hard accepting that. 14/15 was very different, back then we didnt have spoilt fans, and so Pearson was given a chance, the Huth signing was instrumental in terms of defensive quality as well, if we had Pearson now he would have been hounded out of the club. The vast majority of neutrals, whether its fan of teams we played against, pundits, or ex managers, have formed this opinion as well, you are basically saying they all wrong. Whoever has had most involvement in building this squad has failed on a grand scale, all the money spent and what do we have. Brentford, Fulham, Forest, Villa, Newcastle, Brighton, Bournemouth are examples of teams who have progressed since 3 years ago, a squad that was good in 2021 is not necessarily good now, teams dont stand still. Sorry to say, there is no Stoke, Cardiff, Rotherham in this league to make the team look good.

Pretty much yeah, they way too close to the owner for starters. It has allowed them to disrespect managers, they really shouldnt be having easy access to anyone higher than the football director, and that probably should only be for contract stuff.

Its bad, we need a striker as basically all we got of adequate quality is vardy, who cant go on forever. At least one quality midfielder, and another full back who can play either side, but we have a new problem now as well of course with fatawa injured. Cant think of anyone who would play in his place, it would have been ricardo but hes injured as well.

When do we next play in league? seems we still doing internationals, and I am guessing more cup games coming up as well.

Yeah we need his quality, but am still not happy with him at that party, not only due to disrespect to Cooper but also he was injured and travelled there. Any love in with Enzo needs to end, he isnt our manager or his boss anymore, get it out of his head, and respect everything Ruud asks him to do.

You are aware we basically have no midfield most games as we dont have the quality, so the defence is getting constantly pounded, so blaming defenders for that is a bit off. Curious who the 5/6 first teamers are, and remembering it is a squad game. I guess, vesty, mavididi, kristiansen, skipp and maybe el khannouss, thats 2 and and a 3 maybe who have been in and out.

Its what our supporters do. For me I didnt notice any player that stood out being particularly bad, we just were not good enough across the team.

The game is more than on paper formations. We often left ourselves exposed at the back. Easily the most ambitious in terms of forward players with possession this season. We conceded 2 goals during spells of when we had the ball for a period, they took advantage of us drifting players forward.

Probably got told to set up the team to be more ambitious.

This is about the state of the squad in terms of quality overall, in particurlar the midfield. What I have been observing the entire season, and figured out last season in a lower division is the squad is lacking quality. This has been a factor in why I have defended certain players and the previous manager. The general observation from watching us play, is in most games man for man the players lack individual quality, over hit passes, under hit passes, needing too much time to think, inaccurate passes and so on. The Brentford game highlighted this a lot, they were passing and dribbling passed us with little problems, when we tried the same against them with a couple of exceptions we didnt have the quality to do it. This is ultimately why I have persisted with the view point we need to play ugly to win games. Something of interest a week back, I was speaking to another Leicester supporter on reddit about the first goal conceded against Forest, like many people he was convinced it was JJ's fault, when I told him Ricardo lost possession he was adamant it never happened, this went backwards and forwards until he told me to watch the highlights to prove his point, and it clicked, lots of people are relying on highlights to look for mistakes. Of course highlights show a tiny snapshot of the actual game and are overly focused on goal mouth action. As expected the highlights didn't show the Ricardo loss of possession hence him claiming it never happened. When we talk about things like defenders it is important to understand what is going on in other areas of the pitch and action away from the goal, if your midfield is being over run and the ball spends large portions of the game in your own third, you can expect to concede goals in most of these matches, it would require some extraordinary levels of defending to keep a clean sheet in such circumstances. I do repeatedly say my view point defending is a team game, you defend from the front, something we are very bad at. So logically if the midfield is being over run game after game because it lacks quality, then the defenders will be up against it. Fans seem to ignore the amount of clearances made or other aspects of play and just concentrate on what happens the few seconds around when a goal is conceded, it seems its like a mission for people to look for an individual to blame, maybe it helps them hide from their mind the squad overall is not good enough, or its just how they have always seen the game of football. JJ who I have repeatedly defended, I will maintain is a very good player, again evident in the Brentford game most of our forward movement happened on his side of the pitch with him supporting the forward play, but this gets ignored game after game, and people will just look for him when we concede a goal. People wonder why he gets picked, its because managers see the bigger picture, they know there is more to a game of football than the moments around a goal. I think right now you could put prime Roberto Carlos in our defense and he would look like a fool when we concede goals with fans calling for him to be dropped. Of course managers play a part, the best managers can get a squad to over achieve. and we did a win a premier league title with a squad that on paper should have been nowhere near it, a lot of that was some outstanding play in counter attacking for pure efficiency in scoring goals, but also great organised defensive play as a unit. Some managers also shine in certain situations and not others, we see some managers really need to be spoilt with players to shine, whilst others shine with a poor squad but then stumble after they start to be backed. This season unless the club changes its spending policy, Ruud will have to over achieve to keep us up, He is starting off with a slender 1 point advantage. On paper and based on what I am seeing on the pitch we are definitely relegation material. He is going to have to figure out ways we can overcome the lack of quality, whilst utilising our best players to the maximum. I will back him as I did Cooper, like Cooper he is taking over a team in a very bad situation due to poor financial and squad management from the club owner and his sidekick the DoF. I can already see from many posts Ruud is expected to perform miracles, I hope when reality comes to bear people will not turn on him, but instead apply pressure on the upper levels of the club to fix the problems in that area. As fundamentally if we dont sort that out, we never going to become a settled top half EPL team again.

As expected, Brentford a clear superiority in quality, dribbling around our players, passing round them, we try the same and lose possession. Scoreline probably a fair reflection currently. I expect the forum is doing its usual lets blame JJ. Ignoring the other things going on in the game.

Yep, crazy right. I heave learnt of this which I find interesting. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04593477/filing-history

If the reports are true and Top thinks the players were not putting in a shift for Cooper, then just take Cooper's contractual costs from their pay, simple enough. That may trigger some transfer requests which helps clear out the squad as a bonus.

He's been media trained already.

Thats a fairly good article by modern standards.