cityfanlee23

You must be one of them route one merchants

I think their system is a little less reliant on control though so I agree to an extent but we also have to remember they have world class recruitment. We have eroded/had our recruitment system dismantled over the years. The last time I felt like we had a good system in place was under Puel. This really isn’t a dig at a set of fans but I’ve been quite confused that we have a rather large part of our fan base who think our system can work next season because we will be improving the player base, whilst ignoring we have Rudkin in charge, then lots of those same individuals are the same ones saying he’s useless 😂 I’m really not sure if I’m hopeful or fearful for us at the moment, we simply have to go up to save the club, but if we do it could be a very rapid descent back down. on the one hand we need significant investment in Enzo to make this work, on the other hand if we do that and go down we will be ruined for a generation.

This is the big Enzo conundrum. we know he’d rather put his principles over the club if push comes to shove, so we have to accept that for what it is. The problem is, we simply cannot afford the players he needs to make this work, neither can the majority of the premier league would be my assumption, it takes elite players to make this properly functional. Unless the scouting team and Rudkin have some world class transfer gems up their sleeve it simply isn’t going to work and gambling the club on blind faith is insanity. It feels like Enzo will only ever be suited to a big club with top players, or a smaller club with a big budget who can afford them. That narrows his options down massively.

Yeah come to think of it you’re right of recent performances, but it just feels like we only have 45 mins in us, is accountability/leadership really that low that we can’t show up for half of the game most weeks? Then again, we did the same under Pearson for long periods of the season where we would turn up in the second half and we had plenty of leaders under him. Strange, unacceptable nevertheless.

I just can’t understand why we are pretty much always so poor in the first half. Why does it take us 45 minutes to show up every week?

I understand the admiration, I thought it was admirable at first, at this point I think it’s probably some of the most naive and stubborn management I’ve ever seen. so many players completely incapable of playing this system and yet he refuses to change. Nobody is asking for silky football and giant killing, just give us at the very least the basics and a cut out the mistakes stemming from trying to play inverted full backs and putting passing pressure on defenders slower than molasses. crazy to me that people still think we are on the right path with this stubbornness. edit: none of that was a dig at what you said by the way 😂

Precisely why if we do go up, I hope Enzo gets an opportunity elsewhere and walks. We cannot afford this stubbornness in the premier league. We need to extract every single percentage point out of the players we have and that simply won’t happen under this system.

Alonso’s Leverkusen have perfected entertaining control, they break quickly and with intensity but have 60% possession this season the same as us. We are the “can we order pizza for tea?” “We’ve got pizza at home”

I think his options will be limited if clubs actually look at some of his flaws here, Is a club going to take him on knowing regardless of his playing staff he simply won't change his style or be pragmatic? are clubs going to gamble knowing that he will need potentially a huge pot of money to build a squad that can suit his style? big risk unless you have the cash.

I guess it's just personal opinion really, but the thing is, we have some bench players like Mcateer, Souttar, Cannon, Coady, Akgun, Doyle that would still get into quite a few squads in this league, so even with a few injuries, the squad as a whole is still good enough to outplay teams like Sunderland even if we have the odd spot on the pitch that is weaker from week to week. Sunderland and other teams all get injuries too. There are only 2 teams in this league that would look at their squad and think "yeah we are slightly better than Leicester", so in a theoretical world we could say that Leicester, Leeds and Southampton "should" win all of their games, but that has no impact on the fact we are far superior to the rest of the league. And we are top obviously, but the sheer amount of games that we have been well below par for 60 mins is just not acceptable for a team with our quality. Every team has injuries, there are only 2 teams in the entire division that wouldn't swap teams with us. We are top, I can't complain about the position, but when you analyse every performance we have had so many games this season where we could have buried it 3-0/4-0 but we have ended up barely hanging on, or even dropping points. Most of us that have grumbled about the style (I love the Gegenpress so this just doesn't entertain me very much) have gone along with a lot of it because we should be improving as time goes on, but we are not.

I don't get it either, more a judgement on modern society where fans idolise celebrities. It's the way we are going, unfortunately.

I do get that, but I think that is where the fundamental divide in the fanbase appears. Whilst I respect that you feel his not being able to strengthen in January is contributing to why we may be suffering a bit now, the flip side is that we have the best squad in the league, and should not need to be strengthened in order to outplay teams like Sunderland or Hull. Just play to the teams strengths and we should not need to, so for example, our system relies heavily on good central players being able to find passes. If we are short in that department, then any other pragmatic manager would try something else, like, for example, telling JJ or Ricardo/Hamza to overlap, But we don't, we constantly push the ball to the wingers and more often than not we offer them absolutely no support on the overlap forcing them to turn back and pass back to the defence to recycle the ball. Fundamentally that isn't "wrong" but it just shows a real lack of flexibility in the management and in the system. We have 2 of the most dangerous left and right flanks in the division and yet we don't even overlap, something the vast majority of top coaches would come into this squad and implement I would imagine. Strengthening would have been great, but how strong do we need to be to win this league? we already have more than enough imo, and more pragmatic coaches would have recognised that. Edit: I'm obviously well aware that Fatawu and Mavididi have scored goals and created chances this season, but we usually are relying on them being able to create something on their own whether it be taking on a defender or creating some space for themselves, rather than the team creating space for them in the example of the overlap, probably not the best analogy but you get the idea.

Yeah that's a really solid point, on one hand it's a private matter, I wouldn't want you sacked if you were drink driving, but at the same time they are paid extortionate amounts and are role models for so many people and ultimately should be held to higher standards. I will say i've mentioned multiple times that Hamza shouldn't be on the pitch for what he did for a while but I mainly meant principled in the context of his approach to football, but strong point nontheless.

We all hope we can improve, but the same people who are saying “we can improve in the premier league” are often ones that are berating Rudkin every time we concede 😂 We can’t have it both ways, either Rudkin is going to do the business or we are taking a huge risk attempting this against premier league opposition. Hopefully Enzo has a good team who can spot a good cheap player. Because we are going to need Brighton level bargains of the decade if we are going to stick within our budget and sign the 10+ players needed to play this way and survive the top flight.

We look over-trained. The amount of times we have a clear attacking move or pass on and we stop the ball and pass it back is criminal. We don’t need to go gung ho we just need to decide whether we want to attack and then actually do it. Leverkusen play a beautiful possession based attacking style and when they attack they throw men forward, 2 of their best and most important players this season are Frimpong and Grimaldo their marauding wingbacks. Leverkusen play some of the most entertaining football I’ve watched it years, and they have the same 60% possession that we do. They have better players obviously, but they often attack by doing the basics like overlapping. We seem reluctant to really fully commit to an attack. We’ve created a fair amount of chances this year through sheer quality and going direct, today’s 2-2 equaliser goal was a perfect example of us playing simple and effective attacking football whilst controlling the ball. I don’t understand why it’s such a taboo to want that to be something we do more often.

I think at prem level he needs to play as a ball winning central midfielder in the middle of a midfield 3. atleast then he has half of the pitch directly infront of him and doesn’t need to rely doing 180 turns to move the ball onto his favoured foot, if he’s central he has more range and could even drive through the middle. Where he is now all teams have to do is push him onto his right and he either gives it away or turns around and the move is finished. I will say though he’s been great this season in general output so can’t knock him for that, much better this year than I expected, but I still can’t see him doing it against the premier league teams and I think prem players are intelligent enough to take advantage of his weakness.

He could, but he could just as easily end up going to clubs that don’t have the players required to play his system and he will either refuse to change there also and get sacked, or he will leave of his own volition. If he doesn’t have the players to play a rather complex style of football that most players cannot play effectively, where is he going to find a team that can without requiring a significant transfer budget?

I think the point was more that the players were signed for that level, even though many of them have not performed at that level, they are miles above the championship regardless of the poor few seasons they have had.

If we don't get promoted he will be gone imo.

Yeah, in some games it worked and we looked fantastic, in most it's been the bare minimum for a team of our quality in the championship, Hermansen is a premier league keeper already I think most of us can agree, Ndidi Vardy Coady Ricardo Winks KDH is one of the best midfielders in the division and arguably a lower prem player for many Iheanacho is a premier league level striker Vestergaard is arguably the best CB in the division Dennis Praet is better than the championship Callum Doyle is proven at this level Faes is more than good enough for this level Souttar proven at this level and has had some decent games in the prem Mavididi and Fatawu are 2 of the best wingers in the division, Fatawu could very likely step up as could possibly Mavididi with the right setup and some confidence. This is a top 2 team minimum. Regarding which system is better, it's not my job to decide that, but i'd suggest we would very likely improve if we played a system that didn't actively play against the strengths of our players collectively. Even if we wanted to play possession, Alonso has a very aggressive possession based system that utilises overlaps and fast flowing attacks, something that would much better suit many of our players, we both have the same average possession this season. Too many times this season we have been below par for our level in this division. Enzo is in the minority of managers playing this style in worldwide football, there are plenty of alternative systems that would work with the squad we have, what we are doing right now is exacerbating our own flaws by playing a way that our players can't play to a high standard consistently enough, we've been let off the hook by opponents missing chances on many occasions this season, but we have also made a hash of many of our own chances this year too.

Do you mean in terms of would it be a big loss if Enzo goes if he messes this up? If that’s what you mean then no it won’t be a big loss, the big loss is the repercussions we would face if we slipped up now, I’m really concerned.

He's obviously a really principled man and that has to be respected, but right now we face a very perilous situation off the pitch and a worrying one on the pitch. This is one of the most important seasons in our recent history and if we bottle this we could be in massive trouble, potentially facing points penalties or financial ruin. With that in mind it's frustrating just how stubborn Enzo is being, it's clear to anyone watching that we don't have the players to play the way he wants at the level required, it has worked in some games this season where we've played really well, but there have been far too many poor performances this season. We really cannot afford to mess this up, and yet here we have a manager utterly refusing to adapt his system to fit the squad he has to extract the best performance. Not only that, teams have adapted to us because they have worked out that under pressure we crumble, and they are exploiting that. It will be unforgivable if Enzo puts his philosophy before the future of the club and we fail. I have a feeling he will be off in summer, his system needs investment that we simply cannot give him. If he is not going to be pragmatic then we need someone else who will.

I think you're right. If Vardy isnt starting I'd be putting Cannon on personally. He needs to find his feet for next season, because we will need him regardless of the division we are in.

This was supposed to be the part of the season where we are so well clicked that we are dominating everyone, instead we look lethargic, over-trained and putting philosophy over the result. Very poor, but given how awful we have been recently the point will be happily taken, we could easily have thrown it away today and almost did on multiple occasions, take the break and regroup. We just need to hang on by the skin of our teeth for the rest of the season, then make tough decisions. I don't think this is working, we don't have the players required and we don't have the finances to bring them in during the summer. I'm really hoping Enzo will finally be a bit more pragmatic after the break because given what's going on financially around the club right now, we could very well end up bottling this season and being in serious trouble. Refusing to adapt to suit your players is in my opinion putting philosophy over the clubs future, (if it doesn't work) we cannot afford to mess this up.

There is a shopping list of players who have been stealing a wage recently unfortunately.