StriderHiryu

https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/aug/12/premier-league-2024-25-preview-no-11-leicester-city Predicted to finish 19th. Says it all that in the article we’ll be looking for creativity through Harry Winks who has 6 assists in 300 PL games

He does have a reputation of being a bit of a bellend. But with Zaha, he's also a player that can create something out of nothing. 0-0, 10 minutes to go, team all out of ideas (if we had any in the first place under Cooper). Bring Zaha on and whilst he might do nothing, he's exactly the type of player that beats two men and sticks it in top bins. And players like that even if they are not liked, are generally respected by their teammates.

I hate vertical videos, but that's what popular with the kids these days Cooper's changes to our system have led to an incredibly poor press that is going to create a lot more problems than it solves: Not committing enough people forward to press (4 men up instead of 5 last season) Not pressing in packs Too slow to press Poor pressing triggers Passing lanes not blocked Easy to play around the press and take players out of the game so they can't defend A recurring theme against Lens was that our ineffective press tired our own players out and created gaps for opposition teams to work in. Best example from the above clip is Abdul Fatawu running 20 yards to press by himself, just for the Lens goalkeeper to easily pass it around him and take him out of the game.

Perhaps, but the worry is that he's looked like this in all of our games so far...

Luke mentioned in the video a few times that the body language of the players is awful. You see it in day-to-day jobs all the time where a team dislikes their manager / leader. Harry Winks is the most telling for me, he's still acting as professionally as he can, but compare his body language to when we lifted the trophy and it couldn't be more different. For me the worst thing about the Lens game was the pressing. It was absolutely hopeless. After we recorded Luke asked if I was trying to catch him out because when he watched our pressing he was thinking "what pressing is he talking about?" Which is sadly the point I was trying to make. One player running to press leaving 2 open passing lanes simply tires that player out and takes a man out of the defensive block. This is suicidal play in the Premier League. This is what I should use for the video summary description

I tried to make sense as to why it's all been going wrong over on my own channel: Changed the attacking setup for the worse Using the wrong players for the wrong positions Player positioning all over the place Awful pressing Poor build-up I try and show real examples with comparisons to the team just 4 months agon in the video. Probably not the best season to launch a YouTube channel given our incredible perfomances so far !

Last season I would post tons of GIFS with analysis of tactics in our matches. I always try to up my game so this season, I am trying to make videos! Let's see how it goes. Luke from LCFCDownUnder and I review preseason, trying to objectively identify what did and didn't work. I'll warn you that it's rather negative, but we try to call what we saw and reason what we think could be done to improve things. In summary: Changed the attacking setup for the worse Using the wrong players for the wrong positions Player positioning all over the place Awful pressing Poor build-up I try and show real examples with comparisons to the team just 4 months ago in the video. Probably not the best season to launch a YouTube channel given our incredible perfomances so far !

Promising player for me. Sporting wanted him in case Gyokeres went to a Champions League PL club, and Gyokeres is a high pressing all rounder modern forward. My issue isn't the player it's that after seeing preseason, I don't trust the manager to utilise him correctly. Against Lens we tried 3 players up front; Daka, Mavididi and Cannon and Cannon was the only one that was able to get a shot at goal! There's no service.

Had serious vibes of this:

In the match highlights for this one, there wasn't a single Leicester highlight, despite the clip being 11 minutes long. That's how bad we were. 2 shots in total, one on target, which was a pathetic effort. Not even any passages of play showing forays into the other half. Absolutely abject performance from start to finish.

Not sure if you really want to listen to this or not He does say "I won't sugar coat it, this was a poor performance." But also thinks that some things we did defensively were OK...

I really feel it is this simple. Even Enzo himself during the run in started playing a bit more direct from goal with Mads encouraged to kick long more often. Being able to play out from pressure is extremely important in the Premier League, you will be forced to do it some times. But instead of only that way, go long a bit more often when under a ton of pressure against the better teams. Spurs for example ranked no.1 for high turnovers last year and signed Solanke who had the most forward pressures. So we are going to be up against it from game one in terms of being under pressure. Today he tried to play out from the back without Ricardo or Vestergaard, and it worked out about as well as you would imagine that sounds like. Ndidi playing further forward but not part of dual 8's, Kristiansen's inclusion and tinkering with Mavididi's position are also changes he's made that have taken the team massively backwards. Players are not standing in the correct positions either. With Enzo, they stood in poisitions with their bodies shaped to recieve the ball on the half turn, so that when trying to play it out, they could do it a few miliseconds faster, which is what created the spaces in the first place. I could go on and on. The obvious reality is that we downgraded our manager massively. And what we see on the pitch is the inevitable result of that.

Just got an email with a great offer for new merchandise this season: Currently on sale for £30, or £60 for a t-shirt and exclusive coverage of 3 training sessions featuring Steve Cooper himself!

Agreed, it's been dire. Sad but true. You can see it on their faces! I don't agree with that. When Enzo came in, morale was also on the floor. But he perked everyone up very quickly and instilled confidence in them. Several players even said they wanted to stay because they were excited to work with Maresca. I don't think I saw any happy faces in any of the 3 previous games.

Frank De Boer was sacked by Palace after 5 games. I'm not sure what sort of contract Cooper has though, which might make it very hard to remove him. Usually I would say that people are getting worked up over meaningless pre-season fixtures. But not in this case at all. The best example I can give is this. Last pre-season Liverpool battered us 4-0, with Mads making two good saves to keep the score down. And yet in that game, in the first 20 minutes we looked brilliant, playing out of Liverpool's press and making several opportunities which we failed to score from. At the time I did a show on Beyond the 90 with Neel and told him that despite the result, I was convinced we would win the Championship because to get the team working that well, that quickly, despite the result, was the sign of a top coach. Sadly after this preseason I see a team that is going to struggle all season long. Prior to the Lens game I thought the scorelines might not be that bad, but we would ultimately lose through a lack of attacking threat. But today we got beat by 3, and that scoreline flattered us.

You get what you pay for. Who would have thought?

We saw today a team with an exciting young British manager, coaching a team full of confidence, playing great stuff with neat patterns of play, playing out of the press and creating many chances through exciting rotations and overloads. That manager was Will Still, and that team was Lens.

We saw today a team with an exciting young British manager, coaching a team full of confidence, playing great stuff with neat patterns of play, playing out of the press and creating many chances through exciting rotations and overloads. That manager was Will Still, and that team was Lens.

I was really hoping it wouldn't be. What he should do in my opinion is keep exactly the same structure as last season to begin with, and make adjustments afterwards. Finnegan wrote an amazing post in the tactics thread, but essentially Cooper is trying to do a poor rendition of Enzo's system without understanding how or why it worked. Teams who come up are usually confident and excited because they know one another and are used to playing a certain way. Look at Oxford and Portsmouth today in the Championship as examples of that. Our new manager has made us look like a team that just went down, not a team that has just come up.

I'm guessing it will be something like this: "I was impressed with what I saw out there, against quality opposition. The gameplan was working really well, with just a few areas of improvement needed; Defence, Midfield and Attack. Defensively we need to be improve a bit. Win more headers and tackles, make more interceptions and blocks, and stop giving the ball way easily. But otherwise lots of positives to take from that display. In Midfield we need to be able to make more than 2 passes in row, and get those passes on target and into positions whereby players can move up the pitch. But very encouraged with what I saw. Offensively we need to score more goals and make more chances. But I'm sure you can see how inspired it's been to play Ndidi as our furthest attacking midfielder and Bobby's wild lash from 25 yards out showcasing why we've given him a 31 year old a 3 year contract"

The frustration on the faces of our players is so concerning. When I see Harry Winks looking angry and upset... things are not good. I suspect that in training the players have noticed that training sessions are worse, the level of detail being prepared for players is nowhere near as comprehensive. The new coaching team don't seem as clued up as to how to organise and prepare the team. This leads to more uncertainty and nervousness. Now on the pitch you are doing something different before, but it's not working. You lose more faith in leadership again. And so begins a slipery slope...

It's genuinely impressive to take the Promoted Champions who just came off a 97 point season and make them look nervous, scared, unaware of what to do and like a bunch of strangers inside 2 and half months.

Also known as "The Leicester Classic"

COOPERBALL

Ricardo not featuring from the start for the last two games is a major red flag 🚩