StriderHiryu

He has been fantastic in the last two games. Earlier in the season I said he wasn't quite good enough to play as one of the double pivots against the high pressing teams, but now I have totally changed my opinion. Right at the end of the game he also made a ridiculous switch pass with the instep of his foot. A great all round display, defensively, under pressure and affecting the overall game. Maybe drinking was the answer for Hamza after all

The game changed for me with Ricardo coming in for Raiky. Stolarcyk was better at passing the ball out from the back because Ricardo could turn under pressure and keep it going. Then as the game continued to develop, Bournemouth couldn't press as much, meaning we had even more time to build from the back. After about the 75th minute, I could only see one winner, and that was us. It shows you the Enzo style can handle the pressing teams. And as you say, this was all without our Winks or KDH. For me, this was very encouraging.

I think he had an overall good game. Yes he was super frustrating because he could have wrapped up the game on multiple occasions. But he got stuck in, he always made the runs, he affected the game positively overall. It was noticeable to me that everytime we put the ball into the box, he was the one attacking, whereas Praet was often nowhere to be seen. In extra time he looked totally knackered and yet still kept going, over and over again. He lacks physicality and a bit of composure. But I've said all season long that for 7M, I think he represents good value in the market. Of the loan signings, Fatawu is the one we must make permanent. But out of Doyle and Yunus, personally I think Yunus is the better player. Doyle for me looks a bit of a liability defensively. One more thing about Yunus, he has a great attitude. He wants to be here and does not think he is too good for Leicester. He is someone that will give it everything, and that is increasingly rare to see in modern football.

Pretty good performance given the number of changes we made. Hopefully anyone that will play against SPR won't be totally knackered. Bodes well for next season, Bournemouth played a pretty strong team, but I think we deserved the win overall!

On paper we should be alright, but in recent seasons we've missed out on the top 4 twice, missed out on Europe and then managed to relegate ourselves. So unfortunately I cannot put your mind at ease right now, as I can't put my own! I think after the Southampton game we have pretty reasonable fixtures though and should have enough to get promoted. 6 points is a fair amount of points for Leeds to make up, so we should be Champions, but it does feel a bit like we are limping towards the line and might get overtaken.

Yep that's me! This video is basically two peope having a therapy session after having their Friday night and thus weekend ruined by 10 minutes of sh*tting the bed

Overreaction? On FoxesTalk?! Not like this place to be guilty of that is it? Played them off the park for 80 minutes, could and should have been 3 or 4 up, then completely wet the bed and lost what seemed like an unlosable game. It doesn't matter how you setup, who you pick or how you play. You've got to take your chances when they come your way. One of the most horrible defeats we've had for a while, hopefully we bounce back against QPR. I hope the players are absolutely seething at that game, they've totally thrown it away. Use this as our Arsenal 2016 moment.

What a sickener that game was! Absolutely incredible for 80 minutes, then shit the bed for 10. The QPR game a big one now, but come on lads, we showed more than enough in that one to win this division outright!

I'd take the 0-0 right now if offered it. I've always seen this as the hardest game we will have to play all season, even before a ball was kicked. If it's a boring 90 minute affair with both teams well off it... inject it into my veins ! I think it being away from home suits us better. We looked a bit nervous in the home fixture as the onus was on us to send them packing. In this one, their fans will demand they attack, which could open up the spaces we are looking for.

I'm a bit scared to be honest. The team that were most impressive against us and who made us look the poorest were Leeds. They will go for a man-to-man press, but they have players that can match ours in terms of individual quality. They have a rapid front 3 and some of their players are bang in form, one of which is Gnotto who in terms of raw talent might be the most talented player in the entire division. With the way they play, if we can play around their press we can open them up. That might work to our favour, as Boro actually sat back in the defensive phase after the initial build up was complete, so there should be more room to exploit. But we've got to beat that first press, and in the reverse fixture we struggled badly to do that. If we turn up and play confidently, we can do to them what we did to Southampton, but equally if we play badly, they could beat us easily too. I'd expect a game similar to the Southampton one where they have a bit more possession but we have great breakaways. We have to survive that first 20 minutes though, their fans will be smelling blood and with 8 wins in a row, their confidence is sky high. Perhaps the one good thing about the Boro loss is that it gives everyone a kick up the backside. I felt like the two goals we gave away came from overconfidence in our defensive ability.

A manager like this will never put two target men directly up front. The system is all about pre-rehearsed movements and attacking patterns of play. If you change formation, all of that goes into the bin unless the team has practised two separate sets of movements, which is never going to happen. Trust me, it takes so much time and effort to get our patterns of play working and a ton of practice on the training pitch. So regarding the Cannon substitution, it's related to crossing. I've never seen us try a cross into the back post as often as we did against Boro, it was driving me nuts! Boro came into the game with a lot of injuries and Ayling was playing at RB, out of position. I remember Leeds fans saying they loved Ayling, but that defensively he was poor and had needed replacing for a while. I hadn't seen previous Boro games, but I bet that in one or two of their games, other teams exploited him, and we saw it as a weakness. So with that line of thinking, putting a striker in that position instead of a winger makes sense if that's the tactic and Mavididi is having an off day. Despite the changes and many poor individual performances, we still made plenty of high quality chances, one of which we scored. 2 shots on target sounds bad, but what about Vestergaard and Vardy skying it from 6 yards out when the goal is gaping? Or Daka having a header and heading it wide of the goal, when on target it goes in? So I don't think we were too bad tactically, although after the first 45 minutes, I would not have persevered with the back post crosses against Ayling. It just wasn't happening!

Put this in another thread, but will post it here too: I thought the way Boro setup was the perfect way to try to beat Leicester with a weaker team. I think they combined a few aspects well: They only pressed at certain times and pressed specific people. The wide CBs and the two double-pivots. They let Vestergaard have lots of time on the ball, but not the other two CBs. They didn't go man for man, they had two defensive blocks when we were in their third. They were prepared to defend deep and hang on when needed. They blocked passing lanes back to the keeper, I noticed this quite early on. They wanted us to pass it to Faes and Justin. My assumption is that if they won the ball off those two then Vestergaard wouldn't have the pace to recover so you can take two players out of the game with a calculated risk. They changed their front line so that they had lots of fast, mobile players who posed a threat on the break rather than their physical number 9's. Both Azzaz and Silvestra were superb for them. Why I liked their approach is that it's a way to try and pose a threat against a team that is man for man better than yours. By not going man-for-man all over the park, it makes you more defensively stable. By having a rapid front 3 and pressing the wide players, it gives you a counter attacking threat all game long. If I was going up against Maresca, these are probably the tactics I would use too. Despite saying that, we had way more possession and made tons of chances. If Daka scored that free header before their first goal it's a totally different game. This was also the first time under Enzo where everyone on the team was so poor. Only Hermansen comes out of that game with any credit. Vestergaard I think also did well overall, but he skied it when 6 yards out, and his lack of pace made him look like he was running in treacle for the first goal. So I'm not sure about winning the tactical battle per se, but think they were great tactics, and they took advantage of an off day from us. If every one of our players is misplacing a 5 yard pass, then you aren't beating anyone.

We made tons of high quality chances, we had over 2 xG for the game which supports that argument. We just didn't take them and were sloppy at the back. The first goal I think was forgivable to some degree, Faes stepped out and lost it, and as a result there was space in behind, which was exploited. It doesn't matter who we have in the team, playing that way, goals like that are sometimes going to happen. The second one was a bigger crime because in the build up to the goal we took a really sloppy throw-in which meant we weren't in the right shape when we lost the ball as a result of that sequence of play. To directly answer the question, the solution is to pass the opponents to death, shift their defence around and pick them apart. Usually we are so good at doing that, but in this game the amount of misplaced passes we made was incredible. And no player was innocent of the crime, even the subs who came on gave it away. Yunus Akgun came on and did a brilliant sequence of passes that totally opened up Boro, but then 2 minutes later misplaced a 5 yard pass out into touch! It summed up our day. When you play technical football, if you have an off day, it's really hard to get a result. If we look at the 15/16 season, one reason we won the league and Spurs and Arsenal failed is because at the time they also played quite technical football. Whereas in our system it didn't really matter if a few players were under par... inevitably Vardy or Mahrez would get a high quality chance, so if they put it in we could grind games out. In that season we had some quite lethargic wins against Watford, Sunderland and Newcastle. We played pretty badly against Villa away and Bournemouth in both games too. But performances at 5 or 6/10 could still be turned into points in that system as teams still didn't take us too seriously. If you look at Man City, one way they try to solve for inconsistency is to have a deep squad so you have quality on the bench to bring on if key individuals are having on off day. But they drew last night, so it shows it can happen to anyone.

I thought the way Boro setup was the perfect way to try to beat Leicester with a weaker team. I think they combined a few aspects well: They only pressed at certain times and pressed specific people. The wide CBs and the two double-pivots. They let Vestergaard have lots of time on the ball. They didn't go man for man, they had two defensive blocks when we were in their third. They were prepared to defend deep and hang on when needed. They blocked passing lanes back to the keeper, I noticed this quite early on. They wanted us to pass it to Faes and Justin. My assumption is that if they won the ball off those two then Vestergaard wouldn't have the pace to recover so you can take two players out of the game with a calculated risk. They changed their front line so that they had lots of fast, mobile players who posed a threat on the break rather than their physical number 9's. Both Azzaz and Silvestra were superb for them. Why I liked their approach is that it's a way to try and pose a threat against a team that is man for man better than yours. By not going man-for-man all over the park, it makes you more defensively stable. By having a rapid front 3 and pressing the wide players, it gives you a counter attacking threat all game long. If I was going up against Maresca, these are probably the tactics I would use too. Despite saying that, we had way more possession and made tons of chances. If Daka scored that free header before their first goal it's a totally different game. This was also the first time under Enzo where everyone on the team was so poor. Only Hermansen comes out of that game with any credit. So I'm not sure about winning the tactical battle per se, but think they were great tactics, and they took advantage of an off day from us.

That has to be the worst the team has played all season in terms of individual performances. Mavididi, Fatawu, Daka, KDH all hooked and none of them could complain. Enzo could / should also have hooked Praet, Justin, Faes, Vestergaard... pretty much everyone. Even the subs didn't really do that much. Despite that we probably should have drawn or even won the match, but we wouldn't have deserved it. For me the weird thing was we crossed to the outside post so many times this game, and I don't really know why? Were we targetting Ayling? It didn't work if that's what we were going for. Onto the next one, though Leeds away was always going to be the hardest game of our season. Maybe the collectively awful performance today will give them all a kick up the bum for that one?

Maresca gives injury update with Albrighton and Iheanacho back “Marc is back. He starts to work with us. We’ll see for tomorrow. The only one is Ben Nelson. He had a kick against Watford and he’s still struggling a little bit. We’ll see for tomorrow. “He (Iheanacho) is back. Yes (he’s available for selection). “The good thing is that you can choose. The difficult thing is that some of them are going to be out of the first 11 and out of the squad. That is always not a good thing to do as a manager. At the same time, it’s not a good thing to accept that. It is what it is.” Maresca on home form after 13 wins from 16 games at King Power “We said in the last press conference that in terms of home and away, we are quite balanced. This is good for any club. When you win at home, in your stadium, with your people, it’s always a good feeling. But in this moment, it doesn’t matter if we win at home or away. We need to win games.” “It’s very important (to make the home ground a fortress). It was one of the main things to do for us. Even for the players who were here last year, when you play at home with your fans, and the mind is still about last year, it’s not good.” Maresca on Boro after losing away fixture against Carrick's side “My feeling is that we need to be top, otherwise we will struggle. They are a very good team with a very good manager. Last year they did fantastic, this year they have struggled a little bit more, also because they changed some players. But overall they’re a very good team. After the defeat the other day, their manager said they had a lack of ambitions and the game after is always a tricky one because the players want to show the ambitions. We need to be at our top level. We can’t drop anything in terms of humility. “We analyse the final result and sometimes you win a game and you think everything is okay, but sometimes you don’t deserve it. In that game (away at Boro), we analysed the final result, which was not good, but the performance was probably one of our best performances of the season.” Maresca on Winks importance as one of five team needs to play well “For me, in the way we want to play. The three and the two when we build, these five players allow you to play well. The other five allow you to win games: the wingers, the attacking midfielders, and the number nine. The guys that are in the three and two, and Harry has been in there every game, they allow us to play well. If they work well, probably the team is going to play well. If some of them, they are not in a good day, it’s difficult. Harry since we start has always been there. This is the reason why, for him and for some other players, it would be impossible.” Maresca on man management and how to deal with squad of players “It’s a huge part for sure. I always say the same, they are human beings. They have friends, a mum, a dad, like all of us. They are human beings and you need to treat them in the right way. With all of them, I try. Sometimes good, sometimes not good, but for sure it’s a huge part.”

For some reason, most of our fanbase thinks this, and I don't know why they do. This team has gotten progressively better as the season has gone on. That's because the style takes a lot of practice and getting used to how each other player works inside the system. To quote the manager himself: “We are nowhere near what we can be yet. We are happy with the way we’re playing but there are many things we can do better. “We will be even better next year, if we can maintain the same squad.” Why are we going to get rid of the player that has statistically been the best centre back in the division, and who is integral to the way we play? With that line of thinking, we might as well sell Harry Winks because he wasn't good enough to be part of the Spurs squad and had to go on loan to Sampdoria. These players are working right now in one of the most competitive divisions in world football in a team that is on for the record points total. Whilst I am sure we will look to add depth in several positions, barring injuries or suspension, I fully expect Vestergaard to be starting as in the middle of the back 3 at the start of the 24/25 Premier League season for Leicester.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/02/15/enzo-maresca-interview-leicester-city-manager-transformed/ Must read!!!

Very relevant video to the way we play this season.

They are instructed to maintain the angles so that passing can be done quickly, sharply and one touch to specific zones to play out of trouble quickly and shift the opposition block from one side to another. If they are in the final third then they have licence to perform their tricks as Mavididi did so well in this game. Instead of turning on the ball when in full possesion, players are encouraged to receive the ball on the half turn to spin as they receive the ball. If they are being man-marked, that can immediatey take a player out of the game and generate an overload. The style of play is super simple. Create situations where we have one more player than the opposition and exploit it. But playing in a way to consistently make that possible requires amazing coaching. Luckily we have a great coaching setup that are able to do it.

The first half was the best we've played all season IMO. The attacking patterns of play were sublime. That said, Wednesday made it easy for us, they tried to play narrow to stop us playing through them centrally, but Winks and Vestergaard were too good and did so anyway . Seond half thought they stopped the wingers having quite so much of the ball, and that plus putting the handbrake on stopped what looked like a battering from taking place.

From a coaching perspective... take a bow Enzo What Danny Rohl is doing I don't know though. Narrow in the middle, but we are playing through them centrally like a knife through butter, and letting both wingers have all the time in the world probably not the smartest idea.

Enzo-ball has clicked. This half has been phenomenal! What a joy to watch this stuff!