Ric Flair

Briggs and Alves have come alive

Maresca has saved Ricardo's career IMO, possibly Justin's too.

It's because he's a risk taker.

Yeah he is

I've been deeply unwell today. HORRIBLE 😂😂

Yeah you're probably right. Praet had the same injury and he's not even on the bench the last few.

The difficulty is, we don't have games wrapped up with 20 mins to go so he's not getting a chance. Maresca is going to have to put his trust in him at some point.

Hahahahaaa my IBS is actually really bad at the minute, I'm up to my eyeballs in Buscopan to ensure I don't fill me kegs at the BSLB quiz later.

That's when he's at his best. He's a link man. I'd much rather see us sit Ndidi and Winks in a double pivot and Iheanacho and KDH play off Vardy/Daka/Cannon. But he'll never do it.

Ndidi, Winks and KDH were phenomenal that 2nd half. I've done mesen a mischief when that winner went in.

He's also missed some of the biggest sitters of the season, has McAteer. However his positional sense to be where the ball lands is immense.

He's been pony since though. Needs a goal.

Very much like Middlesborough, West Brom are a team we've found far too easy in the last decade or more. Please can we have one last Vardy masterclass at the Hawthorns 🙏🙏🙏

I tend to agree, but what's also worth noting is that in a good chunk of our wins in the first 10+ games, the goals came after 60 minutes when Ndidi was replaced. His movement and physicality helps tire teams out for others to come on and help us get the goals to win.

Thought he came off with just a few mins to go vs Watford to give Yunus a run out?

I can't remember the last time a player played that was being assessed before the game. That to me suggests we're trying to learn from past mistakes on players carrying injuries. He's a loss if he doesn't play, but Coady or Souttar have to step up. I want to see the big man taking bodies.

That's much appreciated pal, nice one

Yeah, that Sunderland game where we went toe to toe with them has seemingly caused us to go very risk averse. There's often a game or spell where managers change or perceive to change, whether that's fair or unfair. I'm worried this is Enzo's and it's come fairly early in to his career here.

Don't have the players for other systems because he's fcuked all our full backs off and seems like he'd rather put pineapple on his pizza than ever use two strikers.

I think it was. I've no problem with rotation, maybe we rotated a bit too much in one go but that's understandable. The mis-control and poor passing from important players like Vestergaard, Winks, Faes etc was extremely disappointing. We seemed to struggle to deal with various basic patterns of play in and around our box, despite having a very experienced back line and defensive midfield. Poor performances can happen, I think our standards in that regard have dropped in the last 5-6 where we're not that good as often as we were. Teams have started to gain confidence in it not being a forgone conclusion that we'll always win. We are being pressed more and we don't yet seem able to nullify it by opening teams up. We want to take more risks on the ball close to our goal than we do when we can look to break quickly, it's frustrating. I'm not naive enough to understand in this league especially, teams can toil both very strong and very weak. It's not an excuse though, I'll always look to analyse why it might be rather than double down it's inevitable and there's nothing to see here. That attitude is dangerous. Momentum in this league is wild. Teams can come from the bottom in the winter and get promoted. I do have some nagging doubts about us and the football we play, but I also respect how good we've been defensively up to tonight and I hope Maresca may say we won't change but behind the scenes he's working to be one step ahead of our opponents who might think they've sussed us.

Funny how people see it differently. He was atrocious tonight bar one very good run and a few quick passes. His control was off, got caught out several times and didn't seem to be able to deal with being pressed.

There's enough warning signs the last 6 games to mitigate some of this though. There are some fans far more reactionary as others, there's others that will cling on to what's already happened to justify their defence. Somewhere in between is sensible right now. We've started brilliantly, albeit as a work in progress as mad as that sounds. Teams are wising up to us and our manager is busy telling anyone that'll listen that we will not change for anyone. We go and put in a truly arrogant and sloppy performance like that tonight and you can see plenty gain confidence that we can be gotten at. The hard work starts now for Enzo, I hope he's got the answers.

With another 8 games in the next 30 odd games, we will need to rotate. We have a supposedly far superior squad to others and we seemed to rotate very well in the first 10+ games but now when the problems arise it seems hard to envisage rotation being the catalyst for consistency.

I think he's decent, he's not exceptional enough to run that flank on his own though. It's not as if we don't have high calibre over lapping fullbacks in Ricardo and Justin either. We've been shafted on this system though.

The irony is, we take risks with the ball closer to our goal where mistakes can be punished than we do towards their goal. I'm struggling to get my head around it.