cityfanlee23

Cooper puts out a "defensive squad" gets hammered by fans, actively makes a really positive attacking change to our midfield 3 that those same fans complained about, gets hammered by fans.

Dropping winks for Buoanotte. Not angry with this. Prefer Fatawu to Ayew but Jordan has worked hard since arriving.

Yep, a large amount didn’t want him, and those that got behind him most were cautious. We had so many Forest fans saying the same thing to us that our fans said about Pearson at clubs like Bristol City, but he’s really not giving me any signs of a foundation being built, don’t get me wrong we are 6 games in nobody is expecting a legacy, but we don’t seem to even have an identity.

I’m quite shocked by how bad Cooper has been to be honest, he wasn’t ever my first choice or even my 5th but he was on the list of about 8 I’d have taken given his record with bringing through younger players and his ability seemingly to get a tune out of players at his disposal, the waters were muddied by Forests wholesale signings which looked against coopers will and that obviously papered over a lot of cracks because you could make the argument that he had his hands tied behind his back as the club was signing players he didn’t want and was having to be pragmatic to make it work. I’ve seen nothing like that since he arrived, no plan, no clue. I didn’t want him but I warmed to him once it was announced and got behind him, many others on here were completely right to be worried about him being the replacement. In hindsight Enzo atleast had a direction, now we don’t even have that. I do want Steve Cooper to be successful here, but it just feels week after week like we are delaying the inevitable. I’m just not sure who we could get in right now. I don’t really believe Enzo anyway when he said he would rather stay at LCFC as a priority when Chelsea were clearly monitoring him, he was visibly angry at the fact we didn’t properly disclose the finances to him (not sure I believe that either) but he would have known coming into the summer that the budget was massively limited with a potential deduction, so the moment Chelsea went in for him officially he was gone regardless of what we did imo. We just needs to decide sooner rather than later what the best path forward is, I’d say it seems pretty unanimous now that most fans have very little faith in what Cooper is offering so far. Sad to talk about replacements so soon, but the football we’ve put together so far has been pretty awful for the majority of each game. This isn’t sustainable, so far we’ve been lucky that atleast 6 teams are just as poor as we are.

Think we had a poll in april with about 80% wanting him to go (at that point he was still religiously refusing to change the system) I think after Millwall IIRC? It's easy to feel nostalgic for Enzo when Cooper is offering up such negative football, I would take Enzo in a heart beat over Cooper but I don't think either would keep us up.

I’d need to remind myself to be honest, off the top of my head I thought he got injured late on in February/March but I could just be imagining it.

In pretty much every game of the season we gifted multiple clear cut chances to our opponents through our own mistakes rather than the opponents class. Can’t deny our goals against record was impressive, but only on paper, defensively we were nothing special and if we defended like that this season it wouldn’t be much better than what we are dishing up today. Stats can blur reality, the attacking power of the championship is poor.

He wasn’t pragmatic until the end of the season. A pragmatic manager doesn’t take a 14 point lead (or was is 17?) being lost to change things imo. I think in hindsight he would have had a better chance of keeping us up than we have now, but that’s hindsight and at the time I didn’t think we would end up with cooper and for his football to be so turgid. I think Enzo is a good manager, but I still believe he needed to spend £100m minimum to have a chance of keeping us up if he was going to return to the football that almost blew a monumental lead. I just can’t help but believe that the football we played at the end he hated, I distinctly remember him screaming at players to slow the game down and pass backwards during a couple of games where we were on the front foot, and that was during the end of season period where we turned it around, so it seemed very much to me that the system was changed through gritted teeth. Again though that’s all hindsight, I’d take him right now for sure, but I believe there are managers better suited to our current position than Enzo. Some managers are suited to bigger clubs.

The sad part is, the time to have brought these players in like Nelson and Braybrooke was under Enzo. I said when we got relegated that the silver lining was a financial reset of sorts, and the ability to bring through our young players, Alves obviously got injured but there was plenty of opportunity to give Nelson/Braybrooke game time especially in games we won quite comfortably. That missed opportunity could very well end their careers here, we could very easily get into a cycle where we just about scrape survival this season, and once again can’t risk having 2-3 young players on the pitch in the premier league, the only hope we have now of those 3 having a career at Leicester is to send them on loan, or for us to somehow solidify ourselves as a safe top 12 club that has 15 points of daylight between us and relegation where we can afford to start giving them 20 minutes here and there. I can see all 3 of Braybrooke, Alves and Nelson ending up having their early career completely wasted here sadly.

Apologies, missed the comma. It was supposed to say “but let’s not kid ourselves, we were the best team in the championship” referring to the quality of our squad and the £40m+ we spent in the summer.

He blew a 14 point lead and almost took us into the playoffs because he refused to change his system even when opponents were exploiting it. We turned it around in the end by basically reducing the amount of Enzoball we played and going more direct in our build up, something the majority of those who said Enzo needed to go at the end of the season cited should have been our approach. The moment we went more direct and tried to run at teams we pulled them apart. His stubbornness almost created the biggest bottle in the history of the championship. In hindsight would I prefer Enzo right now over Cooper, yes, but that doesn’t mean he would have been successful this season. My opinion was always that Enzo needed to go to a club with a big budget to be able to fully express his vision. Can’t see that happening if he was here now.

This. It’s obvious Maresca had a plan and a direction and Cooper lacks that, but let’s not kid ourselves, we were the best team in the championship on paper with a £40m summer spend and were defensively VERY sloppy, making multiple massive mistakes every game against very inferior opponents relative to the premier league, we then had a net spend of about £50m due to the potential of a points deduction, I think we need to hold the ball more, but this idea seems to be creeping in now that somehow we would have been comfortable under Enzo. Our defensive record last season seemed quite fortunate to be honest, every single game we gifted opponents chances but they failed to take them, if we had gifted those same chances to premier league teams we would have been in a world of trouble. Hope Enzo does well at Chelsea, I very much doubt he would be happy here if he had stayed and I don’t think we would be conceding less goals.

Winks has been off his game for a long while now, his first 3-4 months in a blue shirt was amazing, nobody could get near him, his standards in the final 15-20 games of last season dropped massively and the step up in class this season has caught him out multiple times. In those first few months of signing for us I was so surprised that no prem teams really wanted him, at this point I can see quite a few flaws in his game and he switches off easily, Skipp looks the superior player this season!

It's more the manner of the performance, we expected to get beat, what we didn't expect was to park on our own 18 yard line for 45 minutes and let arsenal walk the ball in, with 8 players in our own box, somehow Arsenal still had free players around our goal, there is something fundamentally wrong with how we are setting up and our players knowing who picks up who and where they should be on the pitch.

I said during what was probably one of the worst first halves I've ever seen as a Leicester fan that this match was all about performance, I expected us to lose, I expected us to have to weather a long, drawn out storm and be on the back foot. But to then put in such a dogged performance in the 2nd half and scrape ourselves back to 2-2 thanks to Justin's moment of brilliant and Hermansen putting in the best performance of his career, to then throw it away with such easy goals? That HURTS. Arsenal did the same back post routine multiple times, and we concede with 3 minutes to go from the back post, blame cooper all you want for the result, but that is just a fundamental lack of footballing awareness from the players there to completely forget that someone is there and give him so much space. But regarding Cooper, I just cannot understand why we continue to sit back and soak up this level of pressure for an entire half, resulting in us going in 2-0 down at half time, there is just no need for it. I understand wanting to soak up pressure away from home at one of the league favourites, but we gave them so much space they were practically walking it around our box. So many players were asleep in the first half, and made silly mistakes in the second. Subs were too late AGAIN, but were at least positive subs at 2-2. Time and time again Leicester City show we are best when we go at teams, yet It's been a running theme for years, going all the back to Pearson where managers set us up not to lose, then inevitably have to chase in the 2nd half. We were fortunate not to be down to 10 with Skipp, fair play to the ref who was consistent on that as he had not booked Califiori when he probably should of, thought he had a fair game in the end. Arsenal dominated, they deserved the win, we put in a total of about 40 minutes of positive football throughout that game, the rest was absolutely dire. I really do like Cooper, but he continues to make the same judgement calls week after week and it's cost us on multiple occasions already, feels like we are inevitably going to part ways sooner or later. If the board are not fully convinced now, they need to make a decision, we don't have time to waste, teams around us are just as bad as we are, and a bounce of 3-4 games either with a new manager, or with some Cooper miracle will put daylight between us and the drop.

I just cannot fathom how Arsenal can take the same corner kick routine multiple times and STILL nobody has the intelligence to check the back post.

How many times did Arsenal put it towards the back post? Still can't deal with it.

Hermansen is our next £60m+ sale. What a player.

Yeah we should be down to 10 there.

I just don't understand why every single week we wait until the 2nd half to play like this. We prove time and time again that Leicester City play best on the front foot where we drive the ball forward, we did it under Nige, Ranieri, Rodgers, Enzo and now Cooper, and yet he will still set us up to have 20% possession for the first 45 mins, is he trying to tire the opposition out or something? We can nick one here.

I’m fully expecting to lose this game, in terms of a result it’s not a free hit but as close to one as we can get, this game is all about performance, again, with this context I’m not expecting us to outperform Arsenal or be unlucky, I expect us to be on the back foot, but what I’m looking for is how we approach the counter, how players are moving out of possession and how our formation sets itself up in and out of possession. This is one of the most soulless and gutless performances I’ve seen as a fan. Zero desire.

Offensively clueless at the moment, every single player on that pitch has given up the responsibility of creating something, they are all just hoping that someone else produces a bit of magic, and nobody is moving anywhere.

I think we will setup in an 8-1-1 formation and lose 4-0

It’s a sad state of affairs where I believe that under Big Sam we have a better chance if staying up. Even if we went back to basics and had Ricardo overlapping Fatawu and Kristiansen overlapping Mavididi it would dramatically improve our attack.

I’d imagine if that deal was going to happen, sooner rather than later is best for both clubs