GingerrrFox

As an example from last night, why’s he bringing on Luke Thomas to play RB? Luke Thomas will never play RB for us in the Premier League so why waste time doing it in pre-season? It’s piss poor, you’ve got to be ruthless as a manager, if Luke Thomas isn’t gonna feature in your plans, **** him off until the Director of football does his job and moves him on. Thats his remit not Cooper’s, Cooper is here to build a coherent, winning football team, that’s what managers do in modern football, the rest is down to the football club to sort out.

In modern football players expect managers to have a clear vision of how the game should be played and build a team identity that they can all get behind. Last pre-season under Enzo you instantly saw how the team were structured and his “idea” on how to attack the game, I remember watching that Liverpool game where we had that 30 minute spell, causing them some real issues and yes we ended up losing that game but we were a Championship side playing the 2nd best team in English football at that point and we looked dangerous. Compare that to the 2 games under Cooper against Shrewsbury and Palermo, both absolute fodder really in comparison to a Premier League side and there is no clear structure on how we are going to attack teams and score goals. So far we’ve scored from a deflected free kick and the fact we had a better athlete than a League 1 side with Kasey’s run in behind to beat the keeper. He’s got to build an identity and fast because we’ve got Spurs in 3 weeks who’ve spent the last 12 months building under a manager in Ange who again is another manager who has a clear identity for how his team plays and they will be a well oiled machine.

Sorry to be blunt but that is pure bollocks. I have a background in sports science. Those lads are all under the age of 22, they have spent their entire lives at professional football clubs, being moulded for professional football. There is no way that they have a training workload so high that they can’t play more than 15 minutes of football in pre-season. That’s the manager not having a clue what to do with the talent he has available because he’d rather have different players.

I’ll admit it, I’m very concerned at the moment. Cooper seems to have not done his research on the club and how Jon Rudkin operates, we aren’t great at moving players on and we haven’t been for some time. Our squad is massively bloated yet Cooper is talking about needing reinforcements but the amount of turnover he is talking about realistically isn’t going to happen under our Director of football. We’ve been told before he came, that Cooper is a great manager to bring youth through, well anyone who knows football will tell you that Nelson, Alves and Braybrooke are some of the most highly rated youngsters in English football. Firstly, Nelson was getting games last season under Maresca and proved that he was already very good at Championship level, so what do we do, we renew Vestergaard on a 3 year deal and bring in Okoli. We’ve now got Vestergaard, Faes, Coady and Okoli blocking Nelson’s path to the first team (left Souttar out the equation as he appears to be going on loan). Alves is the most exciting talent to come out of Leicester’s academy in recent memory, he’s been ear marked for the top for years, the lad is pure mustard. By most accounts he’s only got 1 year left on his contract and the wolves will most definitely be circling. Can you really blame him/his advisers for not committing to a new deal, when we are absolutely screaming out for some creativity in the middle of the park yet we’ve got a manager deciding to play Ndidi as a 2nd striker and Will is getting less than 15 minutes in a pre-season game against Serie B fodder? Sammy Braybrooke is possibly the least outrageous to not be used in pre-season but it still rages me that we’ve got an England age group captain not being used in pre-season over the likes of Hamza and Soumare. We know Hamza’s limitations and Soumare has made it pretty clear that he’d rather be anywhere else than at Leicester. Sammy is very similar to Harry Winks, so you can understand that they may not be suitable to play with each other in a double pivot but Winks played a lot of football last season and we know how good he is, does he really need to be playing big minutes in pre-season football when that time could be better spent furthering Sammy’s development? Never mind the lad Golding coming in highly rated from Chelsea and being brought on in the 89th minute of a pre-season game. I know it’s early but I’m going on record that this ain’t gonna work out with Cooper.

What was the point in giving Cannon, Alves, Nelson and Golding less than 15 minutes in a pre-season game? Golding came on in the 89th minute for ****s sake. Cooper may want additional players but until they are in the door he’s got to utilise the players we have and make sure they are ready to contribute at the beginning of the season. My mind boggles at only giving Hermansen 45 minutes as well, he didn’t play a minute in the Euro’s so he hardly needs easing in gently, he needs time to get used to playing with the likes of Coady and Okoli. I know it’s early days but I’m already concerned that this appointment is gonna go tits up.

Pereira dropping into the back 3 on the right hand side so Fatawu can play high and wide is a good use of them both. Allows Pereira to pick passes from deep similar to the inverted role from last season. Like mentioned by others, the balance of the midfield is atrocious though. No way Soumare and Winks can play together looking at this, they are occupying the same spaces.

I’d say it’s more of Cooper doesn’t fancy him as much as Enzo did. He’s a metronome player and it doesn’t look like there will be that much of a role for him in the way Cooper sets the side up.

Using Soumare who can’t wait to get out of the door over Sammy Braybrooke is grounds for instant dismissal in my eyes.

Can’t explain it but a night with Susan is up there for me. Just looks like it would be a good time all round.

We didn’t attack in a 4-2-3-1. We are moving from a back 4 to a back 3 in possession as has been hinted by the players to say “not too much has changed”, the problem is the fundamental change he appears to be making is not using wingers but pushing one of the wide players inside and pushing the full back higher on that side and making a 3-4-2-1 or 3-4-1-2 and asking the other wide man to act as a makeshift wing back. This defies all logic when we are blessed with 2 very good wingers (Fatawu and Mavididi) and we have no actual attacking midfielders in our squad apart from the two young lads in Alves and Golding who weren’t part of the Championship winning side last season. He appears to be moving Mavididi inside from the left wing but his skill set looks to suit being a wide man rather than an attacking midfielder, especially in the Premier League where time on the ball is at a premium in the centre of the pitch. If he isn’t going to utilise Abdul in his best position as a dynamite right winger who has pace and trickery to constantly beat opposition defenders in 1v1 situations out wide then he is throwing away our most attacking and creative outlet from the get go.

Why did we release Reece Evans? Last I heard he was shaping up to be a striker with real potential?

Always knew the club had people posting on here to try and influence opinions.

Too continental for Brexit Steve them shouts Ric 🤣

He may not have used an inverted full back before but when you have arguably the best player in England outside of Trent Alexander Arnold in that role in your squad AKA Ricky P, why wouldn’t you just stick with it? There’s a whole season of work to show that Winks and Ricky work together beautifully in a midfield pivot and it baffles me that he’s gonna just throw it all away.

It actually hurt watching Fatawu being forced to play as LWB in possession tonight in that first half. He was electric last season playing from the right and he really didn’t look comfortable tonight in the role Cooper made him play.

I’m worried that Ricky P will break down in the Prem if he’s going to be asked to play wide and be dynamic down that right hand side as the attacking outlet. At 30 years old with a historical ACL injury in arguably the most physically demanding league in professional football, it’s not ideal. He suited the inverted fullback role so well, could he not play as a midfielder next to Winks now, if Cooper doesn’t want to play an inverted fullback?

Spend £14 million on a dynamite right winger. New manager makes him play as a LM/LWB, Leicester logic.

Few concerns for me. 1) The system Cooper wants to play doesn’t look like it will get the best out of Abdul and we need a proper number 10 as against better opposition, I don’t think Mavididi will cut the mustard centrally. 2) Winks didn’t get the opportunity to dictate the tempo of the game as we seemed to bypass him a lot in possession, hopefully this won’t be an occurring thing. 3) We are massively lacking a left footed CB. If Kristiansen doesn’t stick around then I hope Cooper doesn’t play Thomas as he’s not comfortable enough building from the back in a LCB role at first glance.

Disgusting if Sammy B gets no minutes against Shrewsbury, should have gone to Barwell, the lad needs game time.

Would have preferred Hamza to play the position Cover is and play Braybrooke in the holding role. We literally cannot play through the lines now with Souttar/Okoli/Hamza.

If Danny Ward starts against Spurs, we have to channel our inner Nordic bollocks and pelt the pitch with pork pies until they call the ****er off.

No Alves and Braybrooke. Get in the ****ing bin Steve.

Not convinced that playing Fatawu on the left is the best use of his talent.

Ndidi took number 6 for this season by the looks of it

It’s definitely 4-4-2 out of possession