cityfanlee23

Watch Daka get dropped next game

Happy with him today, he's been a little bit unlucky and slightly wasteful but he's creating more space than Vardy and Iheanacho have managed all season, part of that due to the way plymouth are playing but that does not take away from the fact his positioning and movement have been good, even if he doesn't score today I'd keep him in the team if he replicates this in the second half.

Yeah I’ve said a few times this season I think he’s surprised me with some of his performances given he’s been playing right back a fair bit, but that surprise at how well he’s often adapted doesn’t paper over the cracks in his game, he’s a championship player.

Hard to really judge what’s going on, defending was awful, attacking transition was fantastic but individual decision making has put this game on a knife edge when we should be 3-4 up. It feels to me like today we’ve largely ditched Enzoball and we are playing far less passes before we press the button which is what I’ve been calling for all season, the tempo is increased. But I’m not sure if this is just a result of Plymouth pressing us more or if we are purposely going out to be a bit more direct in transition. Either way the attacking transitions in that half were a breath of fresh air.

Horrendous defending from Hamza there.

We really do not enjoy being pressed.

I'm really concerned by our decision-making upfront and how poor we often are in defence. Our defensive record is fantastic, but I think a lot of that is to do with poor opposition not taking advantage of our constant mistakes.

Hard to tell what Enzoball is, we are playing far more direct today and not passing anywhere near as much, far more space to play into. One of the best first halves of the season so far!

Winks is such a good passer, would really love to see him progressive like this every week.

Perfect project for him really, big ground, loyal fanbase, could be a long term one for him, he did spend time at Newcastle mind but I doubt that will be an issue for him. Would love to see him there but I think Ric is probably right on this one, seems like Sunderland want young players and swanky attractive football, so will probably be someone from France or Portugal etc

They have had a poor few weeks and yeah there were talks at the end of the season, but It sounds like there are fundamental differences between him and the board, from what I've heard Sunderland ownership is essentially dictating signings and Mowbray has been begging them to sign some experience while ownership only wants younger players. Looking at the last 2 seasons they look to have signed 20 odd players, only 2 of them are over 25, 2 are 24 and the rest are U23. Not really sustainable without allowing him to bring in some experience if he feels like that's what they need. Sunderland has the youngest squad in the league with an average age of 22.5. Think Mowbray has done a fantastic job there and will walk into another champ job no problem.

Think the balance just needs to be slightly shifted towards taking more risks and being more adventurous. Our best passer is obviously winks, yet last time I checked which was before the last game his pass record was something like 20% forwards passes and 80% backward/sideways. the problem seems to be we invite the press and if it doesn’t come we don’t really know what else to do, and if it does come we often panic and give chances away, but I’d rather us just press the ball forward at times and be more aggressive when we lose possession.

And people still rate him as the future for us. The reality is he is not a premier league footballer and we should not really risk trying to make him one should we go up, he needs to go to a championship team pushing top 6 and solidify himself and hopefully get promotion and get a few years of stability behind him to grow as a player, I'd love for him to make it at a top flight player in future but from what I've seen it won't be happening any time soon if at all. The reviews are worded very harshly but the points are somewhat accurate.

Ah fair enough! probably just seen select posts of yours, was under the impression you were on the fence!

If we get promoted I'll be really excited to see how his game can transition, feel like he can offer so much more going forward but often is not able to get the space to do so because of the low block we often face. I still think he has more in the tank if given the space and freedom to play.

It almost feels like maybe Winks has misspoken or not really given context, surely there must be drills right? I'd be shocked if up to this point, we did not have a consistent attacking routine being put in place, but then when you look at the amount of times we waste transitions it almost seems like we don't. As much as I'm critical of Enzo something inside me refuses to believe it's as cut and dry as it sounds. Creative freedom is perfect especially given just how tricky our wingers can be, but you need a foundation understanding and then you allow the freedom to innovate.

I was very intrigued by this until I saw that it was a 10 man Sheffield United lol. Will be interesting to see if there are any extended results to see how they setup

Yeah, and I'm happy to concede that and I was not trying to say that it was concrete as all I could mention was what I saw and the LCFC commentary was just supplementary to my point and did seem to align with what I was seeing in that moment. It could be any reason obviously, but given we have been doing this in every game it seemed logical to me that he was applauding the recycling of possession but I could easily be wrong, it's impossible to prove or disprove so I'm just basing it on what I've seen so far, and to add some more balance to this, I noted in midweek there was a few moments where Enzo was jumping on the sideline screaming for them to get forward and transition, which I think is why I have taken the position I have since I've seen him screaming them forward before. This is something I saw with Puel too where he had a very possession-based system but often players ended up recycling for the sake of recycling and Puel was left visibly angry on the sidelines screaming them forward. On a side note, and not a criticism at all because I think your posts have been balanced for a long time and this season you've been quite critical but also understanding of Enzo and the style, it seems in the last couple of games you've warmed to it a bit more? I'm not saying you've moved position significantly, just noticed your posts seem to be arguing a bit more in favour than they you were before, has anything changed for you?

This is a typical Foxestalk response, by me suggesting not applauding and seemingly encouraging recycling possession when we have a clear overload and loads of space behind the full-back, that obviously means I'm saying shout and scream at players and promote bad man management. Seriously? We've been doing this exact same thing in most games this season where we have a clear chance to attack and we break down our own attack by making the decision to pass it backward or second guess taking on a full back, I'm not saying we should full attack every situation, but so many occasions this season we have wasted transitions by slowing it down and killing the move off, it seems very clear to me that Enzo has a very similar approach to "choosing the right moment" as Puel did, Puel frequently frustrated fans by insisting that we endlessly recycle play until the perfect opportunity comes, and it rarely did. It seems obvious to me that the amount of "patience" we play with is being drilled into the team, I'm fine with having patience but amount we have is stifling so many opportunities.

Possibly, but I don’t see why you’d want Fatawu controlled in those situations, we wasted so many great opportunities and very nearly paid the price.

So the commentators were lying then. I watched Fatawu stop an attack and pass it back and the commentators immediately noted that Enzo was encouraging it and said he had done it multiple times. all I can say is what I saw which was players opting to stop a clear dangerous opportunity to pass it backwards and kill it off, maybe they saw something I didn’t but it happened multiple times. I can then only add what was said by the commentary who noted the same thing as me, but with their perspective being that it was being encouraged by the manager, that part i didn’t see but I have no reason to believe the commentators were making it up since it happened multiple times. respect your posts a lot but these “nuh uh” responses don’t really add much. Given the sheer amount of times we have absolutely wasted attacks with sideways and backwards passing throughout the season I really struggle to find any other logical reasoning other than it’s being encouraged. Agree with the last part though, it’s exactly what Puel wanted, Puel constantly referenced picking the right moment and that we should encourage recycling to be ball until a better opportunity arises. Unfortunately for Puel those opportunities rarely came, thankfully they have come for us so far this season, I don’t believe it’s the system that has been primarily responsible for that, a mixture of system tiring teams out and having the quality to grind out games.

Most managers in the world would say not taking advantage of an overload when your opposition our out of position is the wrong decision. Just because Enzo applauded it doesn’t make it right, according to commentators he was seemingly encouraging it on multiple occasions but obviously I can’t confirm this. Im making my point based on what I’m seeing players actually doing on the pitch and the commentators spotting it also and then adding that Enzo seemed to be encouraging it. your argument against that is “nuh uh” And that’s fine we are all entitled to opinions but you’d be hard pressed to find someone on the forum that doesn’t think we often give good chances away to pass it backwards.

If that was the case we would be scoring far more easily than we are now, far more often than not we pass it backwards rather than look for the killer ball, although today we were more progressive. Doesn’t seem logical to clap a player making the wrong decision though.

Maybe, but if that wasn’t the case why does he applaud passing the ball backwards when Fatawu has their right back out of position and Ndidi had bombed forward unmarked? Surely if he just wanted to score he would be jumping up and down gesturing him forward rather than applauding passing it back?

Fundamentally it sounds great, but in reality we had multiple occasions today where we either had Ndidi creating an overload for Fatawu or WBAs right back out of position and Enzo was shouting instructions to pass it backwards then applauding it according to LCFC commentary. It seems counter intuitive for Enzo to not want us to attack when WBA are in a vulnerable position so I don’t think he genuinely wants that, but at the same time I think Enzo seems like a perfectionist who wants to counter in a very specific way, created by the passing, and when chances that were not a direct result of drawing players out arise he doesn’t think it’s valuable to attack them. It makes no sense for him to not want to attack but it also makes no sense for him to be visibly applauding Fatawu passing the ball backwards when he has a defender out of position with Ndidi in the channel ahead of him on his own.