StriderHiryu

Always rated Ayew me

Exactly my thoughts! I'm also pretty sure we will see Skipp and Winks as the double pivot, with Ndidi hunting further up field. I think this can work for us in the Premier League, so excited to see how it goes. Though I don't think anyone not at the game will be able to see it!

You'll take your goalkeeper that launches it down field every time whilst never saving shots, claiming crosses or keeping clean sheets, and you'll enjoy it. (I'm being facetious here)

I agree that signing would make WAY more sense. He can also play as a winger, but to back up your point: Look how high up the field he gets in there system, which is very similar to how we play. He is 22 years old, can speak English and will probably be on cheap wages compared to the Premier League. On paper it would make way more sense. However, just when you think that sounds great, remember who is in charge of football operations at the club...

You love to shit on tons of things that I post, this being the latest in a long line. There are countless examples of our play from last season, or even from this game where we played one of those passes and it worked. It’s high risk, but the reward is to take one or more players out of the game. If you can see what’s around you, you have a much better chance of pulling it off. Playing a blind pass when you’re not 100% sure of what’s around you is about as basic as it gets when it comes to playing or coaching football.

Yep mentioned this in the analysis thread, JJ was poor for both goals. But look at where Faes is, he's not covering himself in glory either.

Personally I don't think Faes is all that. Poor decision making and positioning. He does look better than Okoli from what we saw in preseason though, I give you that.

Here is Wout Faes recieving the ball under pressure in a Premier League game: As an experienced Belgian international, who has practiced playing out from the back all last season, we can expect a smart decision or piece of skill here. Lay it off first time to Vestergaard? Accelerate past Traore who is trying to press him? Dink a beautiful lofted pass over Iwobi to Justin? Pass between the lines to find Winks to help us build up? Nope, go for a blind back heel to a team mate resulting in Fulham robbing the ball and almost scoring. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Wout Faes.

All this is true, but the elephant in the room is that Cooper's system has Kristiansen in the team in place of Ricardo, and that overall makes the team worse. We could play like this right now: Hermansen Faes Vestergaard Justin Winks Ricardo / Skipp Fatawu / Ayew Mavididi / McAteer Buonanotte Ndidi / Reid Vardy / Cannon That was the system that won us the Championship last season. It can even play on the counter attack, see Leicester City 5 - 0 Southampton. So far his new system has Kristiansen and Reid in the team instead of Mavididi and Ricardo, both of whom were two of our best players last season. I'd put money on the setup above performing better and getting better results than the one Cooper is going for. And by the way when we got relegated, Ricardo turned down a loan move abroad to help us get back up. Now he's dropped to the bench. Mental behaviour.

Thank you so much guys, it means a lot. I will be the classic YouTuber and beg for those likes and subscriptions and to follow the official Twitter! These videos do take quite a long time to put together but I think it's something that is missing for teams outside of the top 6. Also, I am no gospel, and can't see or pick up on everything. @DJ Barry Hammond makes a good point about Faes positioning, so will certainly be keeping an eye on that! I will say that even though Vestergaard is slow, we can't just hang back when the front 5 push forwards, as ideally you want to compress the space somewhat in every phase of the game so that the opposition doesn't have acres to work with. Last season we tried to win the ball back quickly to stay on the front foot. We are doing it less this season to make us more stable on transition, but we do it sometimes. There is also an argument that we could push up and have Mads act even more as a sweeper keeper, a bit like last season. In fact I think we just take it for granted that so far Hermansen and Fatawu have been among the best performers, even though this is their first Premier League season and they are young.

We signed Ndidi from Genk when he was a bit younger (18), and who slotted into the team immediately and helped us keep that up plus get to the quarter finals of the Champions League, and then has gone on to be a great servant of the club. Some other talents that came through the same club: Admittedly Dennis Praet, Timothy Castagne and Christian Benetek also came through their academy, which I will keep quiet about. None of those 3 won the young player of the year award though!

Whilst in general I agree with your point, I think you are being unfair on Ndidi here. Many on people claim that Ndidi couldn't trap a bag of cement, when that's not true at all. In terms of stats he's quite good on the ball, and whilst he lost the ball 8 times, Harry Winks lost it 7 times himself. Where he does have an issue is recieving the ball and having to turn when under pressure, and it's obvious that when he doesn't have to do so much of that, but is facing the opposition goal and win the ball back and spray passes, that he's a much better player. However, even saying that, Ndidi is one of the better performers for us over the last two games: One difference between Cooper and Maresca is that Cooper wants one of the double pivot to push forwards a lot, whereas Maresca in general told them to hold back. When Ndidi pushes forwards he's good, but not so good when facing his own goal. Maresca worked that out in preseason which is why Ricardo played next to Winks and Ndidi played higher up with KDH.

See the tactics thread

Lots to say about Reid in this video, plus check the official thread for a better look at some of the talking points mentioned in it.

Tactical Analysis from the Fulham game. And the thread with the lovely animations!

Analysis video here, check the official thread for those lovely animations!

Fulham 2 - 1 Leicester City Post Match Analysis The video above does the best job of explaining my breakdown of the match today. However, as YouTube doesn't allow me to show video clips, I am using GIFs in this thread to make it a bit clearer. I felt that today's game was won and lost by a tactical decision by Marco Silva. He played 4231 against Man United, but pushed Andres Pereira up to almost make a 4141 at times against us. ^ This was done to set a pressing trap against Ndidi. Here we see two men nearby Winks, making it hard to use him to build with. Fulham are deliberately making it look like Ndidi is a safe passing option, because they plan to press him when the ball is played to him. ^ And here is an example of that. This would be a difficult ball for anyone to deal with, but in this case, even Fulham's CDM knows that Ndidi is the trigger to press to win the ball back. ^ Another example of Fulham luring Ndidi into a pressing trap. However, despite initially giving the ball away with a bad pass, after being helped out by Reid, he makes a great pass out to Fatawu that leads to a decent opportunity and move for Reid. ^ Speaking of Bobby Reid, he didn't have the best game, losing possesion 5 times overall. ^ He may have been offside here, but is rather disapointing in terms of his output in the final third. Given that he is starting ahead of Mavididi, you have to question why. ^ Smith Rowe's goal. This is a bit unfortunate as it's a moment of transition. Neither Winks, Justin nor Fatawu cover themselves in glory here, and Vestergaard again shows that he isn't decisive enough in aerial battles for a player with his height. ^ One positive this season is that we look better both offensively and defensively from set pieces. Andrew Hughers, is doing a good job! Whilst this corner looks simple, Buonanotte finds his target (a big improvement for Leicester!) and Vardy cleverly blocks Leno to stop him coming out to punch it. Teams near the bottom give themselves a good chance to survive if they are good at set pieces! ^ Vintage Vardy might have been away at the races with a ball over the top to him like this. But understandably a 37 year old is not going to be as quick as someone in their physical prime. ^ Vardy's lack of match fitness resulted in him making some sub-optimal decisions with poor execution. He initally does well to keep the move alive, but I feel on another day he finds Fatawu to create a scoring opportunity. I might be being a bit harsh here though. ^ James Justin makes a suicidal "jump" from his RCB position to try and close Robinson, leaving acres of space behind him for Iwobi to explit, as Marco Silva's triangles pay off. Vestergaard's lack of pace, Winks not being goalside and JJ being too ken result in a disapointing goal to concede, and another example of getting caught out on transition in the Premier League. ^ Could Oliver Skipp help us improve our building out from the back by playing alongside Harry Winks? I think he could help. He showed some nice turns, touches and passes under pressure. Overall Thoughts Teams continue to target Ndidi in build-up, which prevents us from getting going. Ndidi wins a lot of duels though, so probably should be in the team in some capacity. I think it's likely Skipp will start next to Winks to resolve this in the next Premier League game. Vardy is not match fit, and a lack of a striker will cost us if we can't bring one in. Bobby Reid shouldn’t be starting based off his first two appearances. We haven’t looked awful so far, but the gulf in class / quality between Championship and Premier League has never been so big.

100%. That's why overall I think he was average. On another day he could maybe have been sent off! But he wasn't bad by any stretch.

I agree, the same as in the first game. Defensively he did double up and help Kristiansen. He does make good runs into good positions. I think we are laying into him a bit too much right now, but it's not unfair to say that overall he's been the worst player in the last two games for us. Vardy's loss of pace did scupper some of our attacks today. Today he also made a few poor decisions when we got in, which is unlike him. But I would agree with you, I don't think we will trouble many teams with both Reid and Vardy in the team together. Last season the double threat of Mavididi and Fatawu was what made space for the attacking 8's to join in. We've gone away from that and it's not working as well. Kristiansen was good in the first game, a bit average today. But average isn't going to cut it in the Premier League. I don't know about you, but as soon as it went 2-1, I thought that was game over. We stayed in it and didn't get torn apart. We were in fact competitive throughout the game. However, it felt like Anthony Joshua fighting Oleksander Usyk. We were never seriously going to trouble Fulham. The good news is I think we could rectify things maybe outside of the striker. But the question is if Cooper will do it?

Yeah, I think it's fair to say he's not passed the eye test either. On a free transfer, as a rotation option, I think it's an acceptable signing. But starting ahead of one of the best players in the Championship last year in Mavididi has predictably backfired. I would also say that in preseason, Reid did not impress, and whilst in general the team did not play well, Mavididi scored in several games. I'm not trying to push an agenda here, just stating the facts. If a player comes in and does well, I will point that out too. Buonanotte was not as good today as against Spurs, but had a good first half. Look at the role he played in Reid's chance, shows great strength and ability to play out of pressure to set him up. At the moment the 19 year old rookie looks like a significantly better player.

Trying to be objective, he's statistically been one of our worst performers in the first two league games of the season. Both Mavididi and Ayew played better than him when on the pitch today. McAteer was better in the first game of the season. Everyone has ups and down, but right now he's not in good form.

That's how many shots Reid blocked himself, not how many shots he took that were blocked.

I'm looking at the match right now for my next analysis video, and Bobby.... does not come across too well. Check these stats out... Not great reading. For me a frustrating thing is that he loses the ball a lot / the move breaks down when the ball reaches him. He may well have been offside in this move, but I still feel he could do much better: He did at least have this good chance after good work from the rest of the team. (Though this example is to be used to demonstrate how Fulham setup a pressing trap - provoke us into building with Ndidi and then pouncing on him)