StriderHiryu

Sara is the most like-for-like replacement, a CAM with goals and assists who is also left footed. Would 25M be enough? I can see them wanting more, and as such there might be better value out there that we can get. Excellent player though, no doubt about that.

I'm bricking myself for this season's tactics thread seeing the content @kingfox is posting! This is like being top scorer for your team, but then they go and sign Haaland

Totally agree abotu the set piece taker. I think had Sensi signed, had he been fit enough, he would have helped out massively in that regard. Cooper bringing in this guy is a good sign. If you watched all of last season's Leicester games and looked at the data you would come to the conclusion pretty quickly that the team isn't threatening enough with set pieces, yet alone scoring from them and it's an easy enough fix. I also think the term set piece specialist is a bit antiquated. This coach basically embodies that the most effective set pieces don't rely on world class delivery to a specific area, but more a pre-rehearsed routine that works on easy passes and sharp movement. Don't get me wrong if you have someone that can deliver a corner like Beckham, that is worth it's weight in gold, but looking at opposition patterns prior to playing them and coming up with specific routines will likely be more effective overall. Roberto Carlos scored the best free kick of all time, but if yo ulook at his overall stats, they are pretty poor!

If you look at their set pieces there's way more to it than "lump it to the big man." They usually make a few passes first and / or drag players out of position. That said they sometimes pulled off some goals that were clearly from researching the defensive patterns of other teams and exploiting their marking patterns, such as the Sara goal against us.

Total no-brainer for me. We were linked with him in January but couldn't afford the loan fee! His stats for Hull were ludicrous. 9 goals and 2 assists in 20 games, making an impact from game one. I'd imagine Liverpool will be happy for him to send him on a season long loan again, maybe a loan with purchase option. Either way we should be in for him. Hell if we could get him on a permanent we should be all over it, he's a quality player. I also think it's inevitable someone from Chelsea ends up on loan with us for a full season too.

Time to load up Football Manager...

Brilliant tournament so far, what a great goal in the last minute!

The story isn't as crazy as it might seem, Spurs were also linked with him last season. Hansi Flick took over at Barcelona and he plays the most insane high line in football. Suicidally high in fact. Faes is at his best when he is being aggressive and in that sort of system I could see why they might want him. He wants to keep the ball 70% of the time and as soon as they lose it, to win it back within 7 seconds. Faes was also pretty good on the ball, going on some great runs last season. If your entire team is made up of good players, CBs like him can work. Dortmund fans thought Akanji was awful, but won the treble with Pep. Ake another not considered good enough for Chelsea, but won it all at Man City. That said, for me Faes has always been a huge risk. Loses the flight of ball badly and makes too many rash challenges and for those reasons is a bit of a liability at Premier League level. Soyuncu had similar issues. Fofana was the one that combined all of the aspects succesfully before getting injured, he was aggressive getting the ball back but didn't make too many stupid mistakes.

Because the team already know the system. He doesn't have to change anything if he doesn't want to. In fact think about it, everyone knows where they need to stand and at what phase of the game, and have done it for a season. Why give them entirely new instructions to remember when they already know what to do? For all the criticism of our stlye of play last season, it worked in the Championship and it also beat Bournemouth. The system and formation can also be used whilst telling the team not to bomb forward as much, just like in the Southampton game.

We genuinely should be doing that! It seems to me like our stance is "**** it, let's take the penalty and see what happens." That's a big risk, because what if it's -10 or -12 points? It shouldn't be, but you can't say for certain. That said it probably comes down to selling KDH to not fall foul of the rules and we don't want to do that. And I can respect that decision. I have to say I think it's insane that clubs are motivated to sell players they have developed and support the clubs they have been at for 10+ years just to stay compliant. It's the opposite of what the system should set out to do!

Sounds like it's time for #WelcomeO'Hare !

Yep for sure, Rudkin is a DOF in name only, in reality he's more of a Head of Operations. I wonder if Glover is kind of taking over that role? He has clearly signed players despite Enzo going and may well have been responsible for helping to find potential managerial candidates. I actually expect us to lineup on game 1 in exactly the same was as we did last season, albeit with one or two changes to the starting XI. Spurs under Ange play a high press in your face style, so if we keep our composure we should be able to play out of that press via the 3-2-5 shape to generate chances on transition. The Southampton game in the run-in being the prime example of how good we can be in a ground-based technical counter-attacking style. Cooper didn't play that way with Forest, but with such massive player turnover every season, he didn't have the time to drill in a system. People who expect us to park the bus will be in for a surprise. We might switch over to that at some points in the season, especially if we lose a few games, but I don't expect us to start that way.

The club will be willing to back the manager with signings to compete for Europe over time. The issue isn’t that we don’t have money, it’s that we can’t spend it due to PSR. People often criticised Top for not spending big, but in retrospect the season we didn’t sell any star players and signed Soumare and Daka was a big push that ultimately crippled the club. Relegation and our current situation suck, but compared to all of the other teams that are pretenders to the top 6 club, we won multiple trophies and played in Europe. Only West Ham won something, Villa, Brighton, Newcastle did not. Will we get back to competing for trophies and Europe? Not sure but only because the league is becoming even more competitive. Look at teams like Bournemouth and Burnley splashing the cash these days. But despite our board making numerous massive mistakes, I actually don’t question their ambition.

We keep being linked with left footed centre backs! This guy is a very good player IMO, I would be kind of surprised to see us get him just because I think the fee might not be so cheap. More realistic than Hanko of Feyenord though, even if not quite as good.

Brighton no surprise, but they aren’t in Europe and he’d get more game time here. If we put in a relegation release clause we could compete, with Fatawu the example of what could happen. I won’t get my hopes up but he fits the criteria of: - Cheap - Young / not older than 26 - Potential high resale value - Technical Whoever we sign, I expect them to fit that list of requirements.

I can't see us spending anything like that this window, which is a shame as he looks like a very exciting player. It's both depressing and worrying that Ipswich are able to spunk that amount on a player though, it just hammers home staying up this season will be. I saw on Reddit that a Premier League club were willing to pay the 4M release clause for David Mella, a Spanish U21 player who plays for Deportivo. That could well be us, as less than 10M is where I expect to see us operate, we could do with rotation options from the bench, and he'd both be good in the Championship and probably willing to play there if the wages are good.

I think Cooper is a decent appointment, and there's some serious shade being thrown his way. But despite that, reading that article, I can't help but have this image in my mind:

As Cooper has used a wide variety of styles, it's hard to really know what his plan is. Thus I whenever our first pre-season game is, I will be analysing it like a hawk! In the meantime, this is the best analysis of his potential style so far: At Swansea he used this kind of system, which is quite common to see these days. Ipswich for example do this with Leif Davis starting at LB but ending up as a left winger. Then nominal left winger actually drifts in to become an 8. This means it will be interesting to see how Ricardo and Mavididi are used. If we went like for like, I imagine Ricardo reverts to more of the "bomber" and Winks is more isolated in the build up.

Talked about Super Cooper along with some of the lads tonight!

Got an assist!

Southgate strcuturally is not a good coach. He might be a good man-manager, but I seriously don't think he understands coaching basics. The most obvious thing with England is the lack of attacking patterns of play. Look at us last season, you saw obvious patterns where say the number 8 makes an inside channel run to cut it back to a winger or other number 8. In this tournament, look at Italy, France, even "lesser" teams like Switzerland and Austria. They all have clear patterns, England don't. Another example is that he's seen Trent as an inverted fullback for Liverpool and thinks he can play as a CDM. But he doesn't understand HOW Liverpool used Trent to make that work. England will probably still win the game, just because of the quality we have, but it's in spite of the manager, not because of him. If Potter replaces Southgate, he will be waaaaaaay better.

It's the logical evolution!

Go 1-0 up Defend Concede Repeat Gareth Southgate ladies and gentlemen!

Leicester players showing their quality in this game