cityfanlee23

I think it's a different mindset approach. The only analogy I can give is when I talk to my friends about F1, I love F1 because it's a massively complex sport of strategy, but to my friends, it's just cars going around a track. When my friend talks to me about tennis I zone out as to me it's just hitting a ball back and forth, it's about being able to appreciate things deeper than the score where football fans often lose interest. Personally enjoy watching Man City play their football because even when they are moving the ball around and it's going sideways, they have a very clear switch where a chance opens up and they strike, whereas at present it does not feel like we press the button as often as we could and we tend to give the opposition time to position themselves which then results in us having to pass it around longer. (maybe in time we learn to progress it more effectively) As I pointed out on the tactics thread as an example, Winks has been incredible for us, this tactical approach works well for him, but of his 1400 passes this season, just over 300 of them have been forwards. He's got too much talent to be passing 5 yard balls sideways and backward all game, but that does not take away from how good I think he's doing and I'm not trying to simplify his game solely to 5 yard passes, it's just that I think at times our own tentative tempo is actually holding players like winks back from being an absolute monster. He's had 6 shots this season. It's an endless cycle, the slower we play, the more opportunity teams have to park the bus, the more they park the bus, the slower we are forced to play.

Agreed, I really enjoy watching Man City because they have the quality to make the way they play quite entertaining, the way we have currently implemented our take on the style is often boring to watch and often quite lethargic, this season if you'd have skipped the first half of every game you'd have barely missed anything. I don't expect endless excitement, but I feel the balance of dominating the ball and actually creating decent chances has been leaning slightly too heavily towards dominating the ball for the sake of dominating it. I fully appreciate what we are attempting to achieve and I'm not against it, in principle I think it's a good aim and I saw what Puel was trying to do also, but in the end everyone got tired of Puel ball for similar reasons, the difference is at this level we are winning.

I want to believe that it's just a slight language barrier/reporting issue, I don't believe that he's saying "If you don't like it then FO" but it does come across that way with how it's been reported

I think the promoted 3 are way too poor to be an issue, I think even if Everton finish 4th bottom it will be with a comfortable 7-8 point margin, can't see any of the promoted 3 improving much unfortunately. Everton going down would be a good punishment.

Yeah, I completely agree with this also. I've said to multiple others that I actually do agree with the logic of most arguments on this thread, I personally believe that we went down because we were not good enough but also believe Everton cheated, on top of that, I can't prove that if they had not cheated they would not have stayed up. I'm not making this point as a defence to Everton but I really believe all their signings made them worse and if they had gone back 5 years and not spent all that money they would likely be in a better position now on the pitch, but again I have no real basis to make that a claim. Hopefully, we can reach some sort of financial settlement.

More than entitled to your opinion, once again though FT is awash with emotion and not a lot of hard evidence imo. Hopefully, we come out on top of this particular legal case though as there is no way to change what happened. I hope you're right that we won't need to prove that they stayed up as a direct result of their breaches, because we can't. It's frustrating either way that punishments are always delayed since it's usually too late to rectify damage caused to others.

It was not meant to be a defence. It's simply pointing out that the burden of proof is on those making a positive claim.

Actually this a really strong point that I’d not thought of, we actively avoided spending money to stay within the legal limits, Everton obviously didn’t.

You could be right on that as the margins are so fine, and I think that’s one of the main reasons we will end up with compensation because of how fine those margins are. I guess the point I’m making across this entire debate is correlation and causation. going by the points per game, if we had signed Dean Smith a few weeks earlier we would also have stayed up, the problem is how do you prove that he would have won or drawn those extra games? On a similar line of reasoning it’s very difficult to categorically prove that signing doucoure was the reason they stayed up, because there are plenty of occasions where doucoure actually cost them points. Legally it’s a bit of a minefield but I think ultimately our case is stronger given how tight it was and will likely result in some form of compensation, but I wouldn’t be too sure about it.

And I agree with this assessment, the issue is how do you legally equate correlation and causation. With Tevez it was easy because of the way the deal was signed but with doucoure it’s less black and white

Just to make sure I understand do you mean that the 10 point deduction would have kept us up if it was given last season?

Good point but from my admittedly lacking understanding of the legal system, the Tevez goal is an example of direct evidence, where a player shouldn’t have been on the pitch and scored a goal to send Sheffield United down. Whereas for us it’s circumstantial evidence because there is no challenge over the legality of the players but only the funding used to sign them. So it’s not direct evidence which is why the burden of proof to prove those players kept them up is a grey area. To be honest I think we will end up with some compensation because it’s probably cheaper in the long term to settle something.

Also just to clarify, it’s not a “defence” to say that Everton could have been in a worse state as a result of the amount of money they spent, the league table proves they declined. But thats not proof in itself. The positive claim is being made by people who say we went down because they cheated, the burden of proof is on you to prove that, which is not really possible.

It’s just logical. Respect your posts and I do completely understand your point and there are some aspects in which I agree, but this is just an argument form emotion. There’s nothing tangible to prove it.

But how do you know we would have stayed up? The only real way to prove it would be to be able to show actual evidence that Everton stayed up as a direct result of the players they signed above the threshold allowed, how do you prove that? The vast majority of Evertons signings were awful and you could easily argue made them a worse team when you factor in how gutless they were week in week out, the only way to categorically state we would have stayed up would be to be able to pinpoint exactly why the players they signed were the reason they stayed up. I’m not sure that’s possible.

It’s not really evidence that we would have stayed up though. How do we know that their spending didn’t negatively affect their end position in the table? you could easily argue that if they had not scattergunned so much money they may have had a more cohesive team. Or for example you could ask whether people think that last seasons LCFC team would have gone down under a different manager? If we had appointed Smith earlier we would have stayed up based on Points per game. Plenty of other managers could have kept us up.

Great attitude but I just don’t think the system suits him, I also don’t think it suits Vesty although he’s been a revelation compared to recent years. We have too many defensive mistakes in us and often gift 2-3 clear chances just from us losing concentration every game. Our system requires players to be able to play with 50 yards of space behind them and Souttar and Vesty can’t do that long term. With that in mind though, it really does depend what long term looks like for us tactically, should we get promoted we won’t be able to sit so high up the pitch in the top flight. So then the question becomes is he good enough for the top flight? Souttar should ideally get some game time but if Coady can’t even get into the squad I don’t think Souttar is going to get the nod ahead of him any time soon. Great attitude though.

Mutual terminations don’t often pay up the full sum, they often come to an agreement to pay a smaller amount upfront which costs the club less. And pays the player a good lump sum, for some players that allows them to make more money over the same period of time given the amount of time they then have for other big paying gigs. I don’t really think Vardy is about the money though, but it’s not working for him and hasn’t been for a while now. but with such a short period of time left it’s probably worth him sticking around.

I do understand the purpose, it just is not working very well in terms of end result. The teams often either aren’t taking the bait because it’s very obvious how we want to play, or we pass the ball to death and are too hesitant to make the progressive pass when the opportunity arises. The main frustration though is that when we get the ball on the break we default to this same style where we turn a 3vs3 counter into an 8vs11 parked outside their 18 yard box with no way in. I appreciate dominating the ball, I love watching Man City play, the key difference is though we don’t seem yet to know when to press the button. As I’ve said I think Winks is doing an amazing job, but I think he has so much talent that is not being utilised for the sake of the perfect passing goal. Would love to see him getting forward, taking more shots and putting some more penetrating passes in.

Too often we go for the easy pass. Harry Winks is a perfect example, he’s miles above this level, and we’ve seen the sort of goals he can score and the passes he’s capable of making, and I know that he’s integral to the way we play, but as much as he’s been the standout player, even now we are completely wasting the talent in his locker IMO. He has the ability to be far more progressive than he is, this season in the league he’s been brilliant and we all talk about his amazing pass accuracy stats, but he’s made almost 1500 passes, roughly 300 of them have been forward. Almost 1200 have been backwards or sideways. So much obvious talent in his locker going to waste, he’s one of the best players in our system but he’s very clearly hampered by it also.

You’re right, how Rodgers went on for so long with such a huge support base was all the evidence we needed. It’s one of the major reasons we went down. Even in his final games when it was obvious he was take us down there was still a majority clapping his name.

It’s a slightly tongue in cheek comment about our “horse shoe” style of play, the ball goes out to Mavididi, comes back to Justin, Justin > Vesty, Vesty > Faes, Faes > Ricardo, over to Fatawu, Fatawu whips a cross into a crowded box and we either repeat that or the opponents try to counter. we’ve made about 10,500 passes this season and scored 21 goals from open play. That’s 500 passes per goal. 239 total crosses this season. Of our “action zones” 28% is in our own half, 44% is in the middle. We do pass the ball sideways and backwards a lot but that’s expected considering how much of the ball we have, the issue is our chances to pass the ball forward into dangerous areas are limited because of how often we allow the opposition to organise themselves. Often we accuse teams of “parking the bus” but I think in many cases teams are happy for us to have the ball.

Early days yet but I’m already seeing some of the same sort of attitudes that many had towards Brendan. Different scenario obviously because we are on the up and under Rodgers we were down and out every week, but it does smell similar in that if you question Enzo then you either aren’t intelligent enough to understand the system or you’re just a moaner because we are top therefore anything that you say could be improved is void. Id argue the one of the big reasons Brendan was here so long and one of the reasons we went down is because the majority of fans in the ground refused to criticise and made every excuse possible for very basic errors. Enzo has done an amazing job so far but we still have many areas to improve and so far we don’t really seem to be addressing them tactically imo. But again, I fully appreciate how early we are in his reign.

I get what he’s saying but this screams snobbery and elitism that if you don’t agree with the tactical approach then you simply don’t understand what we are trying to do. Many of us completely understand what we are trying to do, but we disagree with parts of the system and are not being shown signs that it can work long term and are seeing a failure to adapt different aspects. Theres far too much snobbery on this forum already where people assume you “don’t get it” if you disagree with it (not you)

There’s 2 issues that I think stem from one core problem. The attackers are not making the right tactical decisions, if we hit teams on the counter and it’s a 3vs3 for example, you can bet your last £ that instead of making a final pass or having a shot we will instead push the ball out wide and then turn around and pass it 40 times, and by the time we finally decide to shoot there’s 11 opponents in the box. Time and time again we make the wrong decision and pass backwards when we can hit them where it hurts, whenever we counter with the ball I simply don’t expect us to make it count as we know we will give them an age to get back and defend. So with that said, I’m not 100% sure the attackers can be fully to blame. Whenever Iheanacho is in the box he’s completely surrounded by defenders, whenever fatawu is on the wing he has 3 players to beat to then have 1 attacker in the box and another 5 defenders in the box with the striker. This is a very poor tactical decision imo from Enzo. He is the one drumming it into the players that 70% possession is the ultimate goal, and passing sideways is the answer. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe in his style being one that can do well for us, but as I’ve said time and time again, it’s the pedestrian style that bothers me. We can blame the attackers for wasting chances, but ultimately the tactical approach is one of the main drivers, whenever we have a clear chance on we pass it backwards or sideways. I have absolutely no doubt that if someone like Daniel Farke was in charge these players would be producing far better attacking results. Would we be top of the league? Probably, do I want Farke in charge over Enzo, right now no I don’t. But for me each player has issues individually, but fundamentally we are tactically poor in attack and we give opposition teams an age to position themselves, then wonder why they are so hard to break down. If Enzo would allow them to just attack with tempo more often rather than always taking the easy sideways pass we would be far more effective imo. This starts and ends with the system imo.