Sunbury Fox

Of those options, 'determination' would be the one for me. The players have stuck at it even when being totally outplayed, with the comeback to get a point against Spurs and somehow almost getting a point at Arsenal from 2 down being the prime examples.

Jord made some good points that made me think (briefly) that maybe I should back Cooper more than I do. But then Ric sledgehammered home the multiple reasons why the bloke is an absolute liability, so I'm now firmly back in the 'Cooper Out' camp!

Aside from any stats demonstrating it or not, we can see with our own eyes that we're being outplayed for large periods of pretty much every game and conceding far more good chances than we're creating; I assume you're not disputing that? This being the case, if the same happens over a full season it is reasonable to expect us to lose a lot more games than we win and therefore the question is, will we be able to pinch results against the odds in enough games to secure the points we need to stay up? Doing that is probably going to rely on having a great keeper who saves a lot more big chances than the average keeper (tick) and a top striker who finishes a very high proportion of the few chances created (far less of a tick now that Vardy is well past his best).

Could be Mads. Speaks very good English, seems like a nice chap and his comments after the Arsenal game were very interesting. Unlike JJ, who ludicrously talked of how we had gone "toe to toe" with Arsenal, Mads focused on the fact that he should not be facing over 35 shots in any game............

If that happened we'd have Reid starting which is even worse!

All of Enzo's most trusted outfield lieutentants have now been ostracised - Ricky P, Vesty and Winks. You have to think these are players who have expressed concerns about Cooper's approach and paid the price by losing their place.

I like him. Think he's going to be a really good player for us. Can look awkward on the ball at times (he's certainly no Vesty), but he also fizzes in some decent passes through the lines.

You can agree that the results have been about par but the performances have been honking in the main. Eventually our luck will run out, playing this way; it's simply not sustainable. As for Maresca, he would have adapted our tactics in the PL, like he did in smashing Southampton twice last season. So, I don't agree we'd have fewer points under him.

Odd that our Director of Football thought it would be a good idea to appoint a manager whose preferred system would mean leaving out one of our best attacking players. Assuming he even realised that, of course.

Deleted as I replied to the wrong message.

Same. Going to be chaos at the turnstiles tomorrow if this isn't sorted.

Coady or Soumaré.

Truly horrific stuff. At this rate once things revert to the mean, we could be on the end of some real hammerings.

On the positive side, it does show how quickly things can be turned around in football if you get the right manager in post and he is given good financial backing.

Yes, now corrected!

I agree that Cooper’s system just doesn’t work. We end up being lopsided, with no RB when we’re defending and no RW when we’re attacking.

In 90% of games last season, teams parked the bus against us, so we had no choice but to play a heavy possession game. But against better teams in the PL, Enzo would have adapted the style, as he did twice against Southampton in the league and at Bournemouth in the Cup. In those games we were happy to sit deeper and hit teams on the counter. And we looked bloody brilliant. One thing is for certain, Enzo would not be playing bloody Ayew or Reid over Fatawu or Mavididi, or ostracising our best technical player in Ricardo.

This is bang on. You have got to fit the system around the best players you have, not vice versa. If he had really studied all of our games from last season, as he claims, then he would know Fatawu, Mavididi and Ricardo were amongst our best players and therefore should all be starting.

For the love of God, Cooper, get Fats, Mav and Facundo on the pitch at the same time and from the start of the game.

He's a Man U 'fan' from Portsmouth. Says all you need to know about him.

Yeah but what PL experience has Alves got?

Those stats are fascinating. By contrast in the last 20 seasons from 04/05 onwards,, there were: 5 different league champions (1 winner from outside the big 6 - guess who?!) 8 different FA Cup winners (3 winners from outside the big 6 - including us again!) 7 different League Cup winners (2 winners from outside the big 6) So, that is 60 trophies, with 53 of them won by 5 clubs (Tottenham having only won 1 in this time, the LC in 2008). And it gets worse if you look at the last 10 seasons - in that time, the big 5 have won 28 of the 30 trophies (93%), with only 1 non-big 6 club winning anything - guess who?! This goes to show how the power and wealth has been increasingly concentrated into 5 or 6 big clubs, to the detriment of the competitive element of the game. Whilst I still remain a total football obsessive/addict (I love watching games on any night of the week, listening to podcasts about LCFC and football in general), the lack of real competition in the EPL does make it less interesting as a spectacle. I heard a pundit saying the other day how open the league was this season before adding (with no sense of irony) that Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool were certain to be the top 3, but there were 3 or 4 clubs who might sneak into 4th, like that was something thrilling. I think many of us like The Championship because it is genuinely unpredictable and even the 'big' teams lose 9 or 10 games in a season. Compare that to the EPL where Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool are racking up 90 points in only 38 games, losing only a handful of matches. And even in the Championship, parachute payments are starting to take away some of the unpredictability. Not sure what the answer is, though, as money has got such a grip on the game, it is hard to see us going back to a time when competitions were genuinely open.

Always switch off if Barraclough is on the WYS podcast. He's just not objective and doesn't really give any kind of constructive critique or analysis of performances. Piper is way better.

Seeing those match stats on MoTD is truly embarrassing. 36 shots, 76 touches in our box, etc. WTAF. I know Arsenal are good but really??

Amazed that Chelsea didn’t dip into their feeder club one more time for this guy in the summer, as he’s streets better than any of their 2 million keepers. Sadly, will definitely be off for big money at the end of the season. For such a young keeper he’s truly outstanding. I’m going to enjoy him being here whilst I can.