StriderHiryu

Leicester have taken the joint-fewest shots per game in the Premier League this season, while also conceding a league-high 19.3 shots on average. Their expected goals (xG) is 5.38 is also the lowest of all top-flight teams, suggesting even their relative attacking underperformance has still been technical overperformance. These are the facts.

I'm not even sure he tries to break down teams! Look at our expected goal threat, it's one of the worst in the league. In the video there's an example of how Chelsea attack with 5 players, as we did last season. But this season we attack with 4 at most, and sometimes even fewer, there were multiple examples of us attacking with just 3 players going forwards against Arsenal. Bournemouth proved last season that as they started attacking teams more often, they conceded less. Cooper needs to take the handbrake off, but it seems like all the managers that come from the English FA setup all favour defence, multiple England U21 and below managers such as Boothroyd, Southgate and Cooper are all cowards.

My match preview here. How do we win? Being brave enough to play through Bournemouth's mid-block press and utlise the space they leave in behind. We know we can do it, we did it last season! But will Cooper set us up to do so?

Cooper on Walsall: "They are a competitive team that are well setup and hard to break down". Also Walsall:

JLA is pretty good. The season we went down he was pretty low on us also, I think he had us at 14th, which was lower than most others. He just wasn't low enough To be fair, a lot of that will to be do with the PSR stuff at the start of the season, though I would be surprised if he changed his opinion of us after the start we've made.

He's smashing it. According to some You Tube calcualtors I have seen, he is making upwards of £150K a year from it.

Sad watching this. This was our manager this time last season, and we've gone backwards. We were playing the exact same system but ditched it for whatever Cooper's system is instead. It's interesting that Cooper makes the same mistake that Poch did - not enough support for the build up player (Winks) when we try to get out.

Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to someone with superior understanding of the game like @FoxTimmy2 and say he’s identified the “Cooper Dick” formation where us mere mortals are blind. Truly a football mind for the ages.

This is a really great comment, and thanks for the kind words. The bit in bold I think is bang on, and for the reason why he's ultimately doomed. You've probably noticed this @Paninistickers but I will admit that I am a total hypocrite with xG in that I will bounce between "it's a meaningless stat" and "it's the gospel of all football" if it suits my agenda . So I need to find more of a neutral ground myself! I do agree they would have backed off and in fact that's why we got back into it, the attack momentum shows they didn't start the second half as ferociously as they could. The idea of Buonanotte as a false 9 is quite interesting actually. Maybe he's a bit short for it, but he's shown how strong he is on the ball and is suprisingly good at holding the ball up, plus has the vision to do it and can play under pressure. It would be an interesting experiment for sure.

This one baffles me to be honest. To be fair, Cooper isn't the only manager that does it, Arsenal themselves didn't make that many subs yesterday and left them late, but the difference is they were playing great. It'a a real weakness from Cooper because the only game I can think of where a sub had a meaningful change was against Everton when Buonanotte came on. But even in that game, he made the change at 55 minutes instead of half time, and then killed our momentum at the end by taking off Mavididi and leaving Vardy on for too long. Sadly I think his subs so far have const us points, not won more for us. Look at the players that came on in the 97th minute yesterday! What was the point!?

^ Here's the latest video in my post match analysis from our return to the Premier League season. ^ The game was tied at 2-2 up to the 93rd minute. However, despite this, the underlying stats show we got absolutely battered. We scored 2 goals despite having a really small xG. Arsenal had 37 (!) shots, 17 corners and 10 big chances, and forced Mads Hermansen into 13 saves in one game. Without those saves, the game would have been over long before it actually was. ^ I'm going to get right to the core issue of Leicester City's season thus far. Our system is not working! Last year we played Ricardo and Harry Winks next to one another, and we used both of them to build our from the back with. This season, we tend to use Harry Winks primarily as the builder, and whilst Skipp does get onto the ball, he's not getting onto the ball enough. In the passing network above, I would draw your attention to ZERO passes going from Caleb Okoli to either Harry Winks or Oliver Skipp. Compare that to last season when Vestergaard made countless passes to Winks and Ricardo. The reason why Arsenal ruthlessly dominated this game is because they stopped us getting going. We've gone backwards this season in our ability to play out from the back! ^ Ironically, in the first 5 minutes we DID play out from the back and did it pretty well. When you are up against a press as intense as Arsenal's, it's often the best way to cause them problems and take their star players out of the game. It is dangerous, but sometimes the rewards outweight the risks. ^ Here we play out from the back and advance into a good position with the entire team structurally getting decently high up the pitch. However, the ball does get turned over and Arsenal are able to switch the ball out to Saka. Okoli deals with him well, but the sequence shows both the good and the bad of passing out. Despite this, the good teams in World Football these days are able to pass out of a press. ^ Another example of playing out from the back and under pressure. Mads keeps his composure and finds Skipp. In these examples we see the rare times we were able to drag Arsenal around and advance up the field whilst retaining a good shape. ^ Here was the overall Match Momentum. It's pretty grim. Not only were Arsenal on top, but they were on top and threatening pretty much for the enitre match, in what was an impressive performance by them. The few times we did manage to keep the ball and build we kept their threat low and in fact scored our goals. ^ Why did our passing out from the back get disrupted? There were two issues. First was that Okoli today was sloppy with his passing. I don't want to get on his back, because overall he's growing a lot on me and I think he has a lot of potential. But compared to Vestergaard's passing, it lacks a lot. Vestergaard wasn't just good at passing, but knowing when to pass and when to entice players to try and press him to play it around them. ^ He tries to make a pass to Ndidi... ^ But he overhits it and it's cleaned up by Ndidi. ^ For me the tactical adjustment that Arteta made that swung the game was two-fold. First up was Leandro Trossard. He was *everywhere*! At times he was the central striker, sometimes he was a box crasher, sometimes he dropped deep. His positions were hard to track and he got into the dangerous positions that brought Arsenal a ton of joy. ^ The second player that caused issues was Ricardo Calafiori. He inverted as a fullback, but he pushed so high at times, he was almost like another number 8. Given he only signed for Arsenal in the summer, he has fitted into their system like a glove. ^ In reality this meant Arsenal were playing something like this. Trossard was joining up with Havertz, Timber played in the space Trossard vacated, and Calafiori joined up in midfield to give Arsenal total dominance. ^ Here's Arsenal's passing network. They basically played in our half the entire game. Look how high Calafiori (33) and Timber (12) were. They were brave enough to push up so far that only two players ever really stayed back in Gabriel and Saliba. By pushing up so many players they were able to generate superiorities all over the pitch and were always able to find the spare man. ^ Compare this to last season. This was against Bournemouth in the cup. You can see that our double pivot is much closer together and recieving much more passes from the central CB than today. Our striker also dropped back to create an extra man to give us even more chances to find a ball out, with our wingers carrying the major threat. Our CAMs are also deeper so they get more involved. ^ I called out Saka as being a real danger man for Arsenal. He absolutely was, but actually it was his combinations with Timer that caused the real issues. ^ Arsenal's superb first goal. Timber makes the overlapping run past Saka and puts in a great cross. Disapointing to concede given how many people we had in the box compared to Arsenal though. ^ Arsenal remained on top, but got a second just before half time. Trossard drifts between the lines and Arsenal find him to put it away. It's disapointing that for both goals, we had many more defensive players in the box that Arsenal had attackers, but their superb movement and patterns still got us undone. ^ Onto the second half, and somehow we bring it back to 2-2! How? For me there were a few reasons, one of which was one of the few highlights from our game, Facundo Buonanotte. ^ The above chart is depressing, but it shows that the ONE player we have that is able to recieve the ball and drag us up the pitch consistently is the diminutive Argentinian. ^ Over a 15 minute period, Facundo started to really work us back into the game. Here is a piece of great skill to get a shot away. We only had 3 men attacking here, so though the shot could be considered rash, he doesn't have too many options on. He's doing the right thing, but our system isn't supporting him. Arsenal attack with 5, and that's what we used to do under Maresca last season too. ^ One of the stories of the second half was James Justin. ^ First he scores a goal early in the second half after a great set piece delivery from Facundo. ^ Here's his second goal and easily our best move of the match. THIS is the Leicester from last season that won the Championship. Playing out from the back, controlling the ball via the double pivot, having a winger and CAM combine, and after a brilliant left footed cross from Ndidi, finding a spare man on the other side of the pitch. The finish was sublime! ^ So somehow it's 2-2, but the reason it stayed at that score for so long was our brilliant Dane, Mads Hermansen. ^ He got a 9.7 rating on Sofa Score. I can't remember any Leicester player scoring this high for many years. ^ Mads made THIRTEEN saves in this game. He was a one man army and will be the next big sale from the club. What a fantastic player he is. ^ A recurring theme from Cooper are his poor subs. He takes too long to make them, and when he makes them, he makes the wrong ones. It's ALWAYS Jordan Ayew it seems... ^ Late on the game, we have an opportunity to go on the attack. Ndidi plays a great ball into space. ^ It's played into Ayew, with Vardy up supporting him. Ayew could either try to play Vardy in, or even just run to the corner flag and win a free kick. ^ But he has an awful touch and the chance disapears. No excuse for this, he's been on the pitch a few mintues and is fresh with energy. ^ This looks like Vardy is face palming, but he's actually applauding the move. However, this was a good opportunity to do something. In this game and against Palace, when under the kosh, we haven't carried enough of a threat or outlet at the other end of the pitch. That means teams don't need to worry about keeping men back. ^ And that inability to pack a counter threat, plus some more questionable subs in Reid and El Khanouss leads to inevitable. Trossard gets the winner from a corner. Again he picks up spaces where is totally unmarked and free. I don't think we are too badly setup at this corner, and the strike is a bit lucky to go in, but it was coming. Arsenal had 17 corners in this game, so in this one putting on Coady for a back 5 at 90 minutes would have been a good move, but Cooper used that against Palace and did it too early in that game. ^ These are my closing thoughts. On paper the result might seem unlucky, but Arsenal throughly deserved to win. We had a fightback, but I feel this was more fortunate rather than a stroke of genius by the manager. He didn't change anything at halftime, expect maybe telling Buonanotte to get more involved. For me the issue throughout the season is a poor system, not using our best players, and using players in positions that aren't great for them. Justin scored twice yes, but Martinelli had hm on toast for most of the game. This game won't define our season, and to be honest went better than I thought it would go. But I see the same problems in every game, and I don't feel like the manager is learning fast enough, if anything at all.

Sums him up:

Cooper will get himself sacked if he doesn't fix this issue. Our double pivot are Skipp and Winks. Last season we would find the double pivots way more often: ^ This was the match against Bournemouth, a Premier League side. Cooper's style of play means we stuggle to get going. Against Arsenal we were pinned back so much because we never got Skipp and Winks on the ball. Winks looks poor this season because he's not being used in the same way he was last season, which mean his strenghts aren't being used correctly.

Here's my match preview. I expect us to park the bus, if Cooper was brave (lmao) he could try and replicate what Atalanta did and go man-for-man against Arsenal. With some of the players we have (Ndidi, Ayew, Justin), I think there's an argument for it working. Warnock did it with Huddersfield against us last season and it almost worked. It of course carries risk, but so does sitting with a 541 hoping to hold out...

He did try that against Shrewsbury in pre-season, but it didn't work too well. There's literally no reason to change the system to go the way Cooper did. On paper it should make you better on transition, but we look worse! Justin has been caught out numerous times pushing up to attack when playing this way.

Correct, which is truly insane. Especially when the one fullback we have that could actually play that way doesn't feature in the league.

My mate made this, if nothing else, it's an incredible thumbnail

Honestly the body language was apparent even in pre-season. The best two to look at are Harry Winks and Ricardo. Winks has looked like a close relative died whenever he plays. He's gone from a player that looked rejuvinated and delighted to play football again, to the one that was frozen out by Conte and had to leave Spurs on loan. And that's despite the fact that he's in the starting XI!

You have to laugh because otherwise you'll cry. How could anyone in training see Luke Thomas and Ricardo play together and come to the conclusion that Thomas is the better to bomb on? You could say that with his system it would mean that Fatawu wouldn't be able to play wide, but this was league 2 opposition, he could play more narrow. OR Ricardo could play on the left. The use of Kristiansen or Thomas for their left foot is vastly overrated. How many crosses do they put into the box, and how many of those crosses result in anything? Prety good analysis to be fair, and you've hit the nail on the head. His system has made key players from last season worse. If his new system meant better overall performances and results, then no one would have a problem. But we've gone from a team that had a 97 point season and looked like a really exciting prospect, to one who's fans feel have gone backwards.

His tactics are really poor. From a purely objective point of view, I don't understand how he could have "watched all of Leicester's games last season" or looked at this collection of players in training and though that THIS specific setup was the way to get the most of the squad. Inverted wingers are used throughout football these days, you cut in to take a shot. But the way Cooper has changed the system is that one of the wingers comes in narrow, and the other is not able to isolate his opposing fullback one vs one in the way we consistently did last season. So one of the biggest strenghts from last season has been removed. We are one of the worst teams in the league this season for chance creation, the fact that we struggled so badly against League 2 opposition reinforces those stats. The fullbacks we do use to attack are totally the wrong ones if we did want to go this way. Ricardo was being told to sit, and we relied on Luke Thomas to get forwards. Insane. We wanted to make attacking subs so the first change we made was... Jordan Ayew. And then we made 4 subs with 10 minutes left, so predictably none of the new players could work their way into the game and if anything Walsall finished the stronger and we were the ones hanging on. A blind man can see that this manager is sacking himself. The players and fans are baffled and he's out of his depth. It doesn't matter if you are Cooper in or out, this feels like an even bigger act of self sabotage than Rodgers! But this time round it's because the manager is clueless, not because he's doing it deliberately.

Luke Thomas as the attacking fullback when Ricardo is on the pitch

I have to say that it's becoming more and more challenging. I am secretly glad we aren't playing in Europe because I wouldn't be able to keep up! After doing it for a while I have sped up my workflow, but I will say that something I talked to @Mark about in the past would be to allow movie clips to be embedded into the forum. The most time consumin aspect is changing a clip into a GIF. Often times the GIF is too big, or doesn't upload properly and it can take hours. It would be no problem if I could upload to YouTube, but for obvious reasons, they won't allow copyright clips, which is super annoying!

Very hard to say till we play the other two promoted teams. If I had to guess, I think we would be just outside the relegation zone, but it would be very close. My fear is that we stay outside of the relegation zone till the last 3-4 games of the season, and then fall into it. A lot of people are on Cooper's back. I think he's actually done some stuff which is quite good, but baffling team lineups, subs and game management are going to get him the sack if he keeps making the same mistakes. It just feels inevitable that he gets sacked, his successor puts Ricardo back into the team, and Riccy P gets MOTM with a win in his first game.