cityfanlee23

Who would you go for if he was sacked tonight? Genuinely curious Available coaches | Transfermarkt Imo, I think it would have to be someone who can come in and rally the team, Moyes/Nige/Sam type manager. I'd really love for us to find a gem who wants to play attractive football but is the gamble on an unknown any better than sticking with cooper?

It's all opinions but fwiw, I think too many people see the game as black and white of attack vs defence, I agree I think we were setup too defensively minded, but Skipp got forward quite often. Out of the 3 man midfield, Ndidi plays more defensively, Skipp goes forward and Winks plays between the two. This idea that just because we subbed on some offensive midfielders and we started creating chances that we should have started with that and would have got a better result if we did is just oversimplifying tactics. With a 3 man midfield of Winks, Skipp and Ndidi we were still defensively overrun, if we had Bouanotte on from the beginning we very likely could have been even more overrun in midfield which easily could have cost us more goals in the first half. I understand peoples frustrations with Cooper wanting to setup with a more traditionally "solid" midfield at the expense of creativity, but that doesn't automatically mean it's the wrong decision. He could have started with Bouanotte and we go into half time 3-0 down, in the end we came into the 2nd half still in the game vs a Champions League side. Was it frustrating? Yes. Is throwing attackers on from minute 1 always the answer? of course not. Football isn't black and white. I hope we find a better balance too, but my personal opinion is that if we had dropped Skipp, Ndidi or Winks we would have been even further behind with how badly our midfield was getting overrun.

Thought he had a good game too, him and Faes were both a bit muddled for the 2nd goal which was a mistake on both of them but overall he had a much better game compared to what he's shown so far.

His spending since arriving would suggest he's done quite well there, but that's opinions, the point was mainly about the fact we "couldn't afford" him when we've spent £70m+ on players.

The part that's most surprising is that we wen't for an option because he was cheap, rumours from the media suggest we didn't go for Corberan because of his £4m buyout fee, If Cooper can't get a tune out of these players it will cost us far more than £4m, and we've just spent a net £50m on players, how could we not afford Corberan?

Can't believe I'm posting this on a forum of adults, but we can criticise Cooper, please do criticise his mistakes and poor judgement, but can we pack it in with the actual abuse and mocking his appearance?

Okoli has made some mistakes but he's not been too bad when compared to his pre season and first appearances. Hopefully he can keep improving as he's pretty mobile and physically strong

Jesus lads, criticise coopers decisions but the outright abuse and comments on his appearance again?

I think this season is going to need to be a season of trying to desperately outscore the opponents because defensively we are awful. Hopefully Cooper learns from this as we need points fast.

Very true, however in Coopers defence, even with 3 defensively minded mids, we've been absolutely dominated in midfield, could be even worse with someone like Bouanotte on, although we would atleast be able to attack.

Does Big Nige fancy coming in and beating some players up with a crutch?

Cooper needs to take responsibility, but jesus our players look uninterested there. We were finally getting momentum and they just turned off.

He needed a loan move really. I just cannot see where he gets game time given the signings we have made. Even if he was considered for LW/CAM/RW he needs to get into the squad ahead of Mavididi, Fatawu, Buoanotte, El Khan, BDCR and Ayew. I can't see him getting game time this season. I hope a dutch club come in for a loan for him with the remaining 2 days of their window.

They have, but they've also spent £125m and have bought multiple unproven players who lack experience. Fatawu and Skipp are better players than anyone Ipswich have signed. We were also in completely different financial situations, Ipswich wage budget is a fraction of ours at the beginning of the season and they are not bloated with overpaid players, we however needed to spend this window trying to find cheap players like Ayew and BDCR that would give us the experience to try to reset financially. I think Ipswich will go down.

Happy with this.

Difficult window really, when you consider the wages we have taken off the books in the summer and the KDH fee, we haven’t spent a huge amount and the players we have brought in haven’t been too much of a gamble. Not sure on the Okoli signing but Skipp is a player we can likely get our money back on if we go down, and has the scope to be sold for profit in future if we do well. Edouard, Ayew and BDCR are all cheap hits but obviously wages of the latter 2 are unknown as this stage, some good loans out for our younger players. Buoanotte looks a really good young player who will give us a bit of spark going forward from the bench, Fatawu will profit for us in future, khannouss is very highly regarded from what I’ve seen and has scope for profit if he has a good season. For a net spend of about £50m I think we’ve done okay.

I really like Edouard. Which probably means we should steer clear but imo this is a great signing. Very happy with that.

Burnley signing Hannibal for under £6m is a fantastic piece of business imo. Will settle there and 100% be sold in a season or two for £20m+ imo.

I mean, sure we want him to get minutes, but Okoli has proven himself at a higher level than Nelson has so far, he's not been great so far for us, but Nelson still doesn't get into the team ahead of Faes/Vesty/Coady. I don't think even Coady will play more than 10 games this season. So either he goes out on loan or he rots on the bench.

To be honest I'm trying to work out exactly who we can give minutes to this season in order to utilise some younger players, but also not end up with our best players sat on the bench. The issue we have is we have a lot of players who need game time but fitting them into the squad is going to be really difficult. If we sign a couple more players, say Fotis and El Khannouss, we then balancing is going to be hard. Everyone wants to see Alves get minutes and preferably Nelson but where and who gets dropped? We need an attacking outlet in midfield and Alves is not going to be getting game time ahead of Buoanotte and El Khannouss if the papers are right about just how close we are to confirming him. How do you fit them into that team?

I'd say if I was Steve Cooper, probably around the 72 minute mark

He was one of the players who benefitted massively from Marescas system last season, very much like Madueke has so far in pre-season and at the weekend. So many occasions last season Mavididi half arsed a run at the defender only to turn around and pass it back or run himself into nothing. If he got the ball and put his head down and ran at players he would be a far more dangerous player.

Okoli needs time, but watching his pre season i'd rather have Amartey in there.

I really want to like Cooper, he talks well, but so far my experience of him managing us has not really given me much hope. We've played 45 minutes of decent football since he's been here, awful pre season, Signings questionable (they will get time from me), We "couldn't afford" £5m for Corberan yet we have spent £65m on players with atleast £20m of that looking to be wasted, another £5m on goulding who likely won't get a sniff past cup games, we have some brilliant youth players who also won't get a sniff. We have Cannon who is apparantely a fantastic player behind even Soumare in the attacking pecking order, our CB Faes is now seemingly unhappy by being played as a LCB even having spoken to the staff about not being comfortable there, and we have our most diverse and probably best player in Ricardo Pereira being dropped because Cooper doesn't think he can play as a CB during play. Cooper was supposed to be the man who would get the most out of our team to allow us to spend wisely. We feel now more like a sinking ship than ever. He really needs to get to grips with the mess he's inherited from the club, and preferably not add to that by dropping our best player, playing our CB in a position he's not comfortable in and bring on a CDM as a makeshift striker when we have a decent young striker on the bench. It just feels like we are taking gambles at a time we desperately need stability and togetherness.

Honestly, right now I would rather keep him unless we have a guaranteed player lined up. He's a bomb scare at times but the last thing we need is to replace Wout with someone even worse, Rudkins list scares me. I've obviously not got an insight into the dressing room or the players individual thoughts, but in just a few weeks, Cooper has played Soumare upfront over Cannon, Basically snubbed Ricardo Pereira because he doesn't fancy him slotting in as a right central defender (I'd back Ricky to play basically anywhere and do a solid job for us) so arguably our most diverse, reliable and best player has been benches. Now we hear Wout Faes is unhappy being played in a way that doesn't suit him. There doesn't seem to be a real reason for Cooper to be doing this. Literally the whole point of us accepting him coming in was because he played to his teams strengths, so far he's done the opposite of that. Very strange decisions. Let's hope we don't annoy Wout to the point he leaves a few days before the window closes and we either panic buy a donkey or get nobody.