Finnegan

Ridiculously negative way of looking at this tbh. Leeds are showing how this Ipswich side can be got at by genuine quality. We should be fancying a win by a couple of goals. Absolutely no complacency from the players but we go at these ruthless, confident and motivated and we'll do them

At the risk of looking like a twat in a week's time, I think this little run could be the end of Ipswich's title challenge tbh. They look completely overwhelmed by Leeds. I think we'll have far too much for them to be honest. We take six points off them in our two games and it's basically done unless we bottle it.

Ah well

Two teams go up automatically. If we get back to the Prem I don't really give a shit if it's first or second. Look at Ipswich and Plymouth this year. Having a team stay with us for most of the year is probably good for us and character building for the squad. I'd rather that team be Ipswich than have dirty Leeds catch up. Plus they could be 16 points below us at the end of the day and that's almost certainly too much for them to recover unless we show relegation form. We've got quickfire games against Ipswich also to make our own gap there and I think we're much better equipped to beat them than Leeds. I mean a draw is fine. Leeds winning is fine. We're fine any which way. But I'd rather an Ipswich win.

I can definitely see him coming back on loan as a minimum if we go up which I wouldn't hate. Think Man City will want to see him do a year in the Prem before they decide if they're cashing in and for how much.

Ipswich and Leicester wins today please. Extra bonus if QPR steal a point or three. Come on Santa.

He's definitely said all the right things and the way he's played over the last couple of games looks a lot to me like I'd imagine Enzo wants. But we'll see as soon as the window opens if all the talk was rubbish and he bolts straight for the exit won't we.

I think it'd be a great move for Villa. Possibly a silly one for Iheanacho, though. He'd struggle to be first choice there.

Like I said, the condition is "if" Daka is staying in the squad. Daka is the replacement, really, isn't he? He hasn't featured until now when Kel has been injured and we've been fine with one or the other. Plus there's Cannon. We don't need four strikers for one position even if Cannon is still an unknown. Obviously if the club still intends to try and sell Daka in January and Daka is still pushing for a move then we'd either have to buy a replacement (which I just can't see happening), have an ideal loan lined up (still a bit risky) or just have to rely on Cannon and Vardy for the duration. So I think we'd keep Kel.

As an aside, Kel and the club should have a good idea by now whether or not he's intending to extend his contract. If he's set on leaving and both Daka and Enzo are happy for Daka to remain in and around the first time for the rest of the season then I see no reason not cash in on Iheanacho for whatever cash we can get in January, quite frankly. It just doesn't make sense to run out his contract given he's not established himself as critical to our promotion push. Vardy and Daka have offered the same if not better.

"Man City flop striker"

I know it seemed like eternity at the time but it was essentially only three seasons and it was sandwiched by Promotion, Relegation, Promotion the years before and Relegation, Promotion, Play Offs the years after.

Remember when Algeria fans told us Mahrez wasn't good enough for their squad

Wasn't there a thing where for like 15 years Cov hadn't finished in the top 6 of any league lol. Supporting some clubs is just consistently either miserable or dull as all fvck. Supporting Leicester hasn't been boring my entire life tbh

He's at his best when he can just park the bus and counter, I think that's probably what they could do with. I know they've lost Johnson which is a big loss but if he can make them hard to break down and just smash it up to Awoniyi (if he's fit now?) then they'll probably grind out enough points to survive given how shit the league is this year. Honestly, just making them hard to beat will probably be enough.

Can see Nuno doing a good job at Forest too sadly.

I wouldn't say people are jumping back and forth. He was very poor, he's turned it around under a new manager and people are acknowledging that. The ability to change your opinion on something is a trait we should value a lot more in people. Stubbornly sticking to your opinion in the face of overwhelming evidence isn't commendable it's fvcking stupid.

On current form, probably Daka. Historically, obviously Vardy. Both Iheanacho and Daka have a lot of work to do to prove consistency under Maresca. Daka has shown more effort in the last three games than Iheanacho has shown for a while so I'd have him as first choice.

I'm disappointed that it came across that I was being offensive, it certainly wasn't my intention and I apologise if that's how you've taken it either this time or previously. I wasn't being facetious, I was being literal, you aren't Pep Guardiola, that's not an insult to 99.9% of people on the planet, the man is a nearly unequalled genius. And that's my point, you don't need to have his level of understanding of football to be able to appreciate nuance on a football pitch and a coaching qualification isn't any guarantee, either. My dad has his B Licence and was an excellent coach in a lot of ways, I still wouldn't say he particularly 'gets' Enzo Maresca's idea of football (albeit he's now in his 70s and legally blind.) But what you do need is to be actively interested in football from a tactical or technical perspective and to want to strive to actually better your understanding of it and that's just not how a lot of people engage with or relate to football. They want their opinions regardless but they don't actually understand the nuance of what any one player's actual role is within a system because its just not their wheelhouse and that's fine, I just wish they wouldn't then spend their time trawling social media calling X, Y or Z footballer shit. Oh and on a more personal note, Strider, I specifically declined to tag people I perhaps might have been deliberately insulting towards and specifically did tag you because I meant to pay a compliment. I've mentioned you by name because you're a popular figure on the forum and a lot of people treat your name as synonymous with understanding tactics (because you've put yourself out there as such.) And I don't think you're alone, I think there's quite a few posters on here that are really bright, really engaged with the sport from a tactical point of view, read and watch a lot of analysis and statistics and genuinely love it. There's just also a lot of people that absolutely don't and still expect their "opinion" ("Daka is just shit he doesn't do anything he falls over a lot") to be given the same value.

See this is what I don't 100% agree with. I agree with Strider, the things he's good at, he's VERY good at. I'd go so far as to say that, for a centre back, his touch, his dribbling (amazingly), his passing, his awareness of space, his reading of the game are all genuinely world class. If he had a bit more pace he wouldn't actually look out of place at Man City, where the expectations on him to defend for any great length of time would be small. He's not found a place in the team because we've been relegated, in my opinion, he's found his place because we've got a new manager that's given him a different job, one he has the skillset for. Just posted something similar in the Patson Daka thread, I think people need to look past traditional understandings of some positions and accept that Maresca is looking for a 'skillset' more than just "CB", "ST", "DM", "RB", etc. Vestergaard has that skillset. But I do agree - and I've just said as much - that if we get promoted he's going to need a better collective defence around him if we're going to keep carrying his defensive weaknesses. Like I said, nuance.

I find a lot of the "we'll never get away with playing like this next year!" comments to be absurdly premature and probably a little bit overly pessimistic. I think we'd outplay most of the bottom half of the Prem with a few sensible reinforcements and I'm not overly concerned about the future (especially when I see quality counter attacking in games like Birmingham, Southampton, Norwich, etc.) But I am worried about Vestergaard next year. He's absolutely integral to our success in attack but all of the things that make him stand out this year are what we and he do in possession. The times he's looked the worst are still defensively. I don't think it's overly cruel to say he should have stopped two or three (at least) of the goals we've shipped in the last few games alone. He can be our Stones or our Akanji at this level, its fine, we have the same luxury that Man City do in that we can afford to play a CB that's defensively questionable because the rest of the team are superb. The nature of our defensive shape means there's always two or three other people around to quickly recover and support him, too. But its going to be a big ask stepping up a level and having to carry him defensively again, especially when Faes (probably our best actual defender this year) still has a big point to prove in the Prem, Coady is going to be getting pretty old, Doyle if we get him back will be new to that level, etc. Going to need a smart, Fofanaesque bit of recruitment at CB I think to find that bit of X factor to steady it all up.

I think the last few years of playing a lot more tactical football than the average Leicester fan is used to have shown how many people don't really properly understand the game they watch and love. Or, not on any technical level at least. The problem is that everyone's been watching and even playing football all their lives and its very much part of the British psyche that football is A. the national game and B. a simple game. Everyone thinks they're an expert (and in some ways they are, they'll know all the teams, all the players, recognise who is who, etc) and I think it's really genuinely quite difficult for people to admit that actually, they don't really "get" a lot of the nuance of what's happening on a pitch. There are a lot of posters on this forum (and I won't be petty and tag them but I could probably name a hatful just off hand) who I know know a lot about football, who follow football keenly and football is clearly their hobby but I also know they don't get it. There are posters on this forum that think that @StriderHiryu is some sort of wizard or mystic because he understands basic patterns of play and movement on a football pitch. He's not Pep Guardiola (no offence Strider), he just watches the game a little bit more attentively than someone whose interest is, say, what the away fans were singing, who had the best pyro in Europe this weekend, what Fatawu was posting on TikTok or which of ours players fell over more than they twatted someone. We've played a lot of football over the last eighteen months that has created chances for midfielders to score goals. Barnes, Maddison, Tielemans, KDH, Mavididi, McAteer and even Wilf is getting in on the action now. Our strikers aren't our stand out top scorers so the conventional measure of a striker - have they scored a lot of goals - needs re-evaluating. You need to understand a bit of nuance, you need to be able to step back and accept the fact that "striker" is a fairly arbitrary term, Daka, Vardy, Iheanacho they're all just one player on a pitch all part of a wider system. We're not just smashing it up to them and hoping they score a goal, there's a whole load of things being asked of them. Daka's link up play and his movement over the last few games has been better than either Vardy or Iheanacho this season. Even if he hadn't scored at all, he'd probably have done more than the other two have done for a few weeks now and its shown in the teams performances. But you have to be watching properly - not on your sixth lager of the afternoon having been pre-gaming since two hours before kick off and spending more time yelling, singing and chanting - to actually notice. That's not the forte of a lot of the fanbase and that's fine, it's genuinely fair enough, people are free to enjoy the game and the club however they want. I just wish they'd shut the **** up being openly abusive about players they think are underperforming afterwards, especially when you're talking about one of our attackers and we've scored 3+ goals in 3 consecutive games.

You wouldn't say that to Wasyl's face

Oh Casadei. That was your moment man. Great move and he mostly made it himself. Deserved to score that and it would have been so good for him. Rusty sadly.

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