Ric Flair

The promising thing though, is pur players will go for pressing in packs, turning the ball over and attacking quickly if the opportunities or games present themselves. Maybe in time that encourages the manager to not be so against it.

Especially given the opposition had only 7 shots and zero on target. Enzo wants his teams to score goals but he wants them to do it by controlling possession at all times and he'd rather that happen than additional goals for the sake of it, or that's what it seems to me. Bizarre.

Totally agree. The reduction in possession was more taken away from our back line which is the heaviest contributor and as you say the press was executed almost to perfection. Our midfield and attack was far more on point than anything seen in recent months.

Then Southampton are much more able to control possession against us than we are them. Our possession stats against them in the two games are: Southampton 55% Leicester 45% Leicester 33% Southampton 67% That said, Enzo evidently doesn't like us not controlling possession so you might be right it wasn't a tactical plan to play the way we did, probably more Southampton were classically going nowhere with the ball and we found it easy to set traps and then counter after winning the ball in dangerous areas. But I repeat, Enzo is never glowing about this type of football so quite possibly player led.

I think this is a stupid decision though, instead we don't enable development and let them go for free. I know the alternative is they go on loan, do well and reject a new deal but the compensation is worth more than letting them go and if the relationship is good on promises for their future then a new deal isn't impossible.

Don't want to tempt fate but if we do secure promotion then we'll try and get our audience what they need as soon as possible.

Good on you Fraser

What I meant and I may still be wrong, is if you take some examples of games where we took the lions share of the possession - we still gave up a certain level of shots against us compared for example against Southampton where we gave up possession and yet they created less than any opposition I can remember all season. This could be an outlier, they were poor and it might be lost in what was wasted before a shot was made but in 2024 we've started to be easier to attack against our heavy possession style.

Yeah we've had the likes of Popov at the back end of seasons in the past.

I agree, it can't have helped. Also momentum shifts fast in football, that's why it's hard for fans to accept unwavering belief and refusal to change things from managers when the momentum does shift. But that's possibly failing to understand without assurance and clarity in your own mind as a manager, success/momentum in the first place is harder to achieve and certainly harder to do repeatedly.

If we have had an underwhelming season then so have Leeds and Southampton. I don't tend to disagree with them, but more because of how impressively Enzo got our act together from the off only for us to toil when we should have been in a position of strength. Anyway, fcuk um. Let's get up and get gone.

Always felt he's a victim of not developing in to a physically strong winger. I really hope he goes down the leagues and builds a career as he's got big talent that may work its way back up to the top 2 divisions. Got to question how we failed to successfully secure a loan for him, accepting it might not have been our decision not to.

I want Sammy Braybrooke to be given every opportunity to make it at Leicester and he's got certain skills as a deep lying central midfielder that are sublime. However, this lad is the combination of strong, excellent tackler, good passer and runs a midfield very well. Destined for a big move in the summer.

This is my, how do UEFA get challenged.

I know I've been extremely critical of Enzo and us in general but I was absolutely staggered at the Sky reaction to what they just witnessed. We were absolutely devastating, like we were against them at their gaff and they barely said anything complimentary about us. It was weird, even Pearson didn't want to spend much time covering his former club. Really odd.

There's a chance Huddersfield will still be in with a shot of survival last game vs Ipswich so we'll just have to deal with whatever we need to do Monday and then Saturday.

One thing that should be pointed out is that he's an academy player that has already worked extremely hard to reach a very high level. What I mean by that is, he wasn't an obvious talent to break through to PL standard but one that took his chances in League One and then The Championship extremely impressively. Likewise his 1st 3-4 months when he broke through under Rodgers he was exactly what we needed to inject energy in to our side. So whatever happens to him, I'll always be impressed with how he took control of his future from an ordinary academy player still playing at that level at 21 to where he's got to and likely will get to. He's frustrating, there's easier parts to his game he doesn't do well enough but then equally the sight of him progressing the ball up pitch with pace and the opposition unable to get it off him is an aspect of football not as regularly seen in modern football that i'm still a sucker for. I've a feeling he will score a huge goal on Monday for us to clinch it. He started this season by dragging us over the line to get the season going at home to Cov, let's see if he can march us back to the Prem on Monday like he said he would.

Yeah you're right!

I get that but we are often incredibly wasteful but he's less concerned about that if the " idea " was still executed and we've won comfortably. People are right that there's always going to be certain aspects that can be improved upon and you touch on some things from Tuesday but I think it's interesting what Enzo gets concerned more with. We know he's not massively interested in playing counter attacking football, he's said as such and will remind anyone when they try to revel in patterns of play where we've done that. I just think on his journey as a manager (hopefully successfully) that he'll need to learn thr art of that being part of his armoury as what he currently truly believes in. The reason I say this is if we do get promoted, then next season I think teams are going to open up more regularly against us and having the ability to be comfortable in possession like we are but devastating on the counter which we definitely are will be an essential combination.

His post match comments when we beat Stoke 5-0 away were far more complimentary. So those claiming a manager will never be truly happy without room for improvement, is not necessarily true. The man is uneasy with anything other than total domination of the ball, which makes me uneasy. Such a shame because if he learns the art of when to implement one or the other, both we and he become a very dangerous and effective prospect.

There's strong evidence that his possession ideology at this club yields less control in games than performances like yesterday in the shots against stats as well as things like xG etc. So many games in 2024 that we've dominated possession against some ordinary teams who've created a significant amount of chances. Both games against Southampton where we gave up the majority of possession and chance creation and xG etc is an absolute landslide in our favour and will favourably stack up against our preferred way of playing. Why that doesn't drive him to a light bulb moment in his vision for the way football should be played is beyond me.

It's a very good season from him but Craig Bryson once scored 16 and got 14 assists in a single season at this level for Derby and he was never deemed too good for this division. KDH still has a lot of faults, at a level below what would be expected of him and yet he's not really a young player anymore and the question mark is will his 1st touch or decision making on passing accurately drastically improve?

Yet the irony is, when we've laboured to 1 nil defeats to dog muck like Bristol City, Millwall and Plymouth he'll claim he's happy with the performance and won't criticise Vardy or Daka for their inexplicable misses. He was argumentative when we played a similar counter attacking display away at Birmingham, although he had a right to be frustrated that night as defensively we were poor. Last night was a masterclass all over the pitch against a side that is a similar mantra to his and we've destroyed them twice letting them have the ball. I'd hope that was deliberate and a game plan from him, but perhaps not so and just the players took advantage of the situation. If the latter then let's hope he has a similar life changing realisation that he could be a little more flexible in his ideology, like his experience watching the way Pep's Barcelona played all those years ago.

Correct