cityfanlee23

This is the part I just cannot grasp, how can people defend the manager and say it doesn’t matter who’s in charge whilst we have Top and Rudkin? We all know the rot starts in the board room, but for gods sake, how does that excuse having a single attacking plan the entire game. Even Enzo had multiple options, when Fatawu got the ball, either Ndidi overlapped the central channel, or Ricardo/Justin overlapped the wide channel. This created space for Vardy and Fatawu. Under Marti we do nothing, we pass it to Fatawu and his options become: A) Beat 3 players and rifle it top corner B) Cross it into nobody because our strikers seemingly have the explicit instruction to not run into to box for a cross C) Pass it backwards and do the inevitable horse shoe from Fatawu to Mavididi. I’ve watched opponent central midfielders literally WALKING from left to right because of how slow we do our little horse shoe between the wings at times, at the most they have to do a little jog, I can’t remember the last time we pinged a pass from Fatawu into Vestergard or Winks who immediately pinged it into Mavididi. This manager is just as pedestrian as Enzo, without the over/underlaps. MC is by no means the core problem, but he is having no problems creating issues for himself on match day, and ultimately he is a problem that can be addressed at any moment, if he wants fans on board fully he needs to start playing to his own principles and stop picking favourites.

To think, we were potentially a week away from getting Rohl, who is now going to instantly turn Rangers around before inevitably moving to a prem job, somewhere we won’t be.

Not going to lie, I much preferred Ruuds vision of football to the one we are seeing now.

He inherited rubbish, and continues to play said rubbish whilst we have players capable of playing a leading role in our rebirth in our youth ranks. Nobody’s expecting a silk purse from a sows ear, we expect the basics like not picking the same inconsistent rot every week, not attacking in the exact same way every single time we get the ball, and actually pressing. Largely boring football, very predictable system, barely sniff for ‘the future’ He got absolutely everything right when he arrived here, he’s made so many basic mistakes since.

Brendan Rodgers is an elite coach, so many players have said it and he often improves players initially, but he's a honking club manager, the issue is, he's a coach who demands management level responsibility, and it's the same old story, he comes into a club and immediately improves them with tactical and coaching tweaks, players thrive, but as the transfer windows pass, as staff leave and need replacing, his complete lack of ability to actually manage the club and find adequate talent shine through, and all of the good coaching work he does eventually gets overshadowed by him making bad coaching staff and player signing decisions trying to fit square pegs in round holes, and at that point when the heat gets turned up, his ego takes over and he blames everyone but himself whilst refusing to change. BR simply cannot succeed long term unless the club he's at is well run and refuse to hand him extra power, the moment they do, the club declines.

Missed out massively.

Honestly I didn’t even read what I was typing, don’t bother 🤣

He did hold it too long, but he tried to push the ball into space to open up for a shot because we love taking 25 passes to get the ball outside the box only for the defenders to drop into a deep block to defend it. Carranza hasn’t done anything in blue yet, but he’s barely given the ball in a position he can actually do anything. Hes had 1 clear cut chance for us (which he fluffed), the rest of the games, we take so long to do anything in transition that by the time he gets the ball to his feet his 25 yards out, back to goal with 3 defenders behind him.

Carranza is this weeks scape goat for the system not producing clear cut chances.

His ceiling is absolutely massive and he’s producing goals in a system that imo currently makes it harder for him, if he had a midfielder running into the central channel or a full back consistently overlapping him as Ricardo/Justin/Ndidi did under Enzo he would have far more space to operate in and be dangerous. Right now he’s doubled up on with no consistent overlaps leading to him being forced to go for the same cut in and shoot every time. If we can give the team a bit more attacking freedom Abdul will go from strength the strength.

Big improvement today, I enjoyed watching a fair bit of that game and we were comfortably the better team. Hopefully Marti can find a solution that gives the striker more space centrally as they are still often compacted into spaces where they get the ball and have basically no options or are surrounded by players, they tend to play as a False 9 at the moment with their back to goal. We need to figure out the central area because at present we still rely too much on magic from a wide player cutting in. 3rd and improving.

A clear improvement and positive steps today, but still utterly toothless as an attacking unit. Marti can hopefully address this because relying on magic every week is not a recipe for long term success. Under Enzo, we had constant overlaps on the left/right. Mavididi had overlaps from the LB and underlaps from KDH, Fatawu had overlaps from Ricardo or underlaps from Ndidi, which created space for either the winger, or dragged defenders wide creating space for Vardy/KDH. Under Marti, we don't seem to do that, meaning the strikers get absolutely zero service, and the wingers are pretty much exclusively cutting in and shooting as a means of chance creation. The Carranza miss is the sort of position I'd love to see us creating more often by creating space for the striker, albeit swansea had far more space behind them at that point as they were chasing the game, but we tend not to exploit central spaces when they are there. Big improvement this match, and the result was completely fair.

Fantastic goal that

Looks like we have another scapegoat for us not burying games when we are “dominating” Overall the performance was an improvement for me, but we still lack any sort of attacking bite under Marti and he doesn’t seem to be addressing what look like very basic tactical issues when you compare side by side with how Enzo utilised the team. Barely any overlaps, barely any channel runs from the strikers, barely any runs from the midfield overlapping in the middle.

I don’t think so, under Enzo the full back and either KDH/Ndidi constantly overlapped into the channels to create space for the winger or for the striker. We don’t really do that, all we do is pass it to the wingers with very little overlap which creates no space in the middle. I think if we saw Jordan James bombing forward into the channel I between the striker and the winger it would open space up for Daka/Ayew, just my analysis but every time I see Daka or Ayew get the ball played into their feet, it’s with their back to goal 30 yards out, they don’t seem to be tasked with making any runs on the last defender like Vardy did. It’s not something I’ve looked into deeply it’s just a passing thing I’ve noticed quite a lot in each game.

The system is killing our strikers atm.

We look improved and the players look up for it, it still feels like we need to work tactically on how we can abuse space in the central channels, top class goal from JJ, but once again came as a result of having to cut in from wide. When we control the ball we take so long to do anything the opponent just drops into a deep block and we are naturally forced wide where it's far harder to score and we rely on a bit of magic, plenty of times the midfield duo have had loads of free space but instead of playing it forward progressively, we've opted to go sideways and give Swansea a chance to close the gaps. Definite improvement though.

Just checked in, how was the first 15?

I agree, football is won on the pitch and statistics and data are what drive it off of the pitch, the point I was making though is generally speaking, xG and a whole host of other stats have a strong correlation to where teams end up at the end of the season, if you have an xG of less than 1 throughout the season, you are very likely going to end up in the bottom half unless you’re incredibly clinical with your chances. The only reason we are where we are in the league is because everyone around us and the strongest teams are losing, not because of our performances across 90 minutes. Our low xG perfectly aligns with what we are watching on the pitch.

Can we convince him to buy us instead?

If xG and other related stats don't matter, clubs all over the world wouldn't be using it. In reality, pretty much every modern football club in the top 2 divisions in Europe deeply analyses these statistics and use it for player recruitment, tactical analysis and post-match reviews. Also I really don’t understand the bookmakers comment, bookmakers use xG and other statistics in their algorithms when creating their initial price. Bookmakers in part rely on these stats to keep themselves in business. I'd be more than open to you giving me an in-depth analysis as to why clubs all over the planet are wrong for following these statistics. I'm not expecting MC to come in and revolutionise us instantly. What I did expect was for us not just to attack in the same manner 99/100. Even Enzo realised that in order to get Monga/Fatawu working well on the wings, you needed Ndidi to provide an overlap. Ndidi wasn't even very good at that role more often than not, but his sheer movement and presence often unlocked a huge gap in midfield for the winger to drive into. We don't have Ndidi anymore, but Marti doesn't seem to be instructing the players around the ball carrier to open these spaces, all we do is pass it to the wing, then A) Fatawu beats his man and crosses it into nobody, B) Gets crowded out and has to pass it back to the defence who then recycle it to Mavididi on the other side, C) Fatawu is forced to beat 3 players and shoot by cutting in and we pray for magic. He doesn't have any support, seemingly isn't trusted enough to allow the CM or RB to overlap, so we end up in this cycle of predictable play. I don't expect miracles at all. I expect Marti has considered all of this, but I'm just too stupid to realise that the solution to these problems is far too complex, and the solution would cause more problems than it fixes, but that is what he is paid to fix.

Maybe there's a bit of hyperbole, but it's worth noting I'm talking about the championship in general, not going back to the 90s/early 2000's. 23/24, Fatawu, Mavididi and Ricardo would have been good enough to get in many of our squads. You've covered strikers when i didn't once mention a striker we have being one of the best, but imo, Mavididi and Fatawu have proven they are 2 of the best wingers this division has seen, especially since we returned there from league 1. I'm not saying they go into a 10 man shortlist for best player ever, but in the thousands that have played at this level, Mavididi/Winks/Fatawu/Ricardo/Monga (still early days) would be in the top 40 imo. We can argue semantics now about what defines the "top 40" etc etc, but it's probably easier to just say that with Mavididi, Winks, Monga, Fatawu, Ayew and Ricardo, this team should not be struggling to create clear cut chances, and I'm of the opinion that whilst these players have flaws, the system is the biggest thing holding them back right now.

Playing Monga is inevitable he doesn’t really need to be in this discussion because he’s miles clear of most players in the squad. Nelson has been dropped for “tactical reasons” Aluko hasn’t made a championship appearances, he was on the bench for 2 games and didn’t get any minutes, and Paige played 55 mins in 2 games, then hasn’t even been selected for the last 4. It starting to look very clear to me that MC doesn’t rate Aluko, Paige or Nelson.

Oh it's not solely down to the manager, absolutely not, the players we are still stuck with needed to be moved on years ago, but the system is a large part of it, we have been toothless I completely agree, but since Rodgers left, we had Enzo who proved we could score goals at this level (even if I wasn't a fan of the style), and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thought that Ruud or Coopers tactics were any good. The issue is, we have massively dropped down in class, yet our goalscoring chances are still woeful. The players are a huge issue, but Winks, Mavididi, Monga, Fatawu, Ricardo, even Ayew are all good enough to produce goals at this level, the system is currently massively holding these players back, and the players take the rest of the responsibility.

I think anyone who frequents this place enough knows I absolutely hate modern possession football, and I think it's killing the sport from a raw entertainment perspective. I can appreciate the tactical principles and why coaches do it, but I watch football to be excited for 90 minutes, not 10 minutes. I was fully on board with Danny Rohl coming in, he represents much of what i wanted as a fan, but when that fell through and Marti arrived, many of our fans who are more knowledgable tactically than me started deep diving into MC and what he would likely bring to us, and with good faith these people spent countless hours researching, the general consensus that us fans came to is that Marti would bring the following to the club: - Possession football with an emphasis on attack - High aggressive press when we lose the ball - An overlapping fullback and an inverted fullback that would likely swap roles mid-game - A team that will try to score another goal even if we are winning comfortably, we always want another goal (paraphrasing MC's own words) - An adaptable coach who will adapt the tactics to suit the players we have - An adaptable coach who will adapt the tactics to defeat the opponent - A coach who will put faith in one of the most promising crops of young players we've ever produced with one of the best training facilities on earth. - A coach who doesn't seem to have "favourites" and will pick players based on merit (paraphrasing MC's own words) So far, we have an xG of less than 1 with a team that has 5 cheat codes in this division, we don't aggressively press to win the ball back, our fullbacks overlap maybe a couple of times per game, we do not try to attack heavily until the last minute, we recycle and pass sideways even when chasing because 100% possession and a draw seems more valuable than 50% and a win, Marti doesn't adapt the tctics to suit the players, he forces the players to follow the system and simply swaps out players mid game into the same role, often leading to players like Skipp getting completely lost, we play the same system regardless of opponent, and attack in the same predictable way, Nelson, Aluko, Paige all dropped in favour of the players who got us into this mess, and players like Ayew (who i don't actually believe has done much wrong, he's just being woefully misused) picked week in week out. I didn't want this style of football, but I was sold on the idea (and believed) that this one would be different. I keep reading "once it clicks", "he's building something", "he needs time". To do what? Why does he need "time" to realise that Skipp and Soumare weren't working, that playing Ayew 30 yards from goal will result in a lack of goals? to realise that attacking from the wing with no overlap and no central midfield bombing forward would result in a lack of clear-cut chances? I'm not a coach, i'm an idiot, but how can so many fans see this but the manager never can?