cityfanlee23

Skipp and Ndidi are offering absolutely zero support to Facundo there. He comes out of defence, looks around him and has absolutely no options, both Skipp and Ndidi are jogging out of our own box by the time he gets tackled 20 yards ahead of them. Justin and Kristiansen are also massive issues defensively and in transition.

Vardy looked dead on his feet there.

Happy to give you Ricardo, but Winks played the vast majority of his passes sideways and backwards which Skipp is perfectly capable of. And Okoli is far more mobile on the ball than Vesty and often puts in long-range passes through the midfield. Skipp is an upgrade on winks, Okoli is far more athletic and maybe only slightly worse in passing. This is an entirely different level, players like Vesty and Winks would not have the freedom to make 25 passes in one phase at this level, we look very poor when trying to play it out.

This isn't a "dig" at fans as such but I just can't see how many of our fans think this team would be able to play possession football if Enzo had stayed at this level with a net spend of £50m on players. Pretty much every time we play out from the back we look shakey, different ways of approaching playing out of the back obviously, but I just can't see how we would have achieved it without being a defensive bombshell, we need to play to suit our squad and passing it around deep inside of our own half under pressure is causing us big issues.

First half was quite even, Bournemouth edged it early, we edged it late. 2nd half we've started half asleep.

Okoli is playing so well today

Really good play under pressure there, fantastic goal if Vards finishes that

Have to say, I really like Okoli, was very shakey during pre season, but last few games he's looked really strong, athletic and has been the better CB of the 2.

Need a GIF/Replay posted of the hand ball, looked absolutely blatant for me.

Ayew seems to have a free role across the attack, he's played LW, Central and now RW

Both teams have been lacklustre in the final 3rd really, Bournemouth made the better start but we've defended quite well overall.

It's very likely why Cooper doesn't want to play Fatawu on that flank with him, Fatawu and Justin can barely defend between them at times.

WELL DONE STEVE COOPER FOR THAT POSITIVE CHANGE TO MIDFIELD.

Yep, if he played Fatawu they would then move on to hammering him for Ricardo, if he played Ricardo they would then hammer him for not playing Vesty, if he then played them and we drew the game they would hammer him for whatever else they could think of. Cooper has massively disappointed me so far, but as you say, in some fans eyes he cannot do anything right. I won't get political on this thread, but it reminds me of someone I spoke to recently, who was calling Keir Starmer all sorts of names after he announced a government policy to house all veterans, he was genuinely angry because Keir Starmer didn't announce it on day 1. That was what he was angry about, that it took 2 months to announce a policy he agrees with. Madness.

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.