StriderHiryu

Some of the football has been SEXY today!

https://ge.globo.com/google/amp/futebol/times/sao-paulo/noticia/2023/12/08/sao-paulo-recebe-proposta-de-quase-r-100-milhoes-do-zenit-por-beraldo.ghtml Leicester mentioned in this article. Zenit had an 18m Euro bid turned down.

How far is he off the first team? I am a bit surprised he's not featured at all, not even on the bench, given we are in the Championship.

What did Vickery say about him? I actually rate his opinion, he said Tete was a gamble and was not that impressive in Brazil, and has generally got the top Brazilian talents right. It's just one man's opinion of course, but he tends to know what coaches and pundits in native Brazil think about players. What I would say is that the way we will use a player like this will be incredibly different to how he's seen him used in South America, and in a team where we are expected to dominate the ball, physical stature is less important. Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji aren't defensively that strong, but played in a treble winning team because of other characteristics. When you see the clips and stats of this player, you can see exactly why we are after him. The same can be said for Valentin Barco actually, even if he just joins us on loan. Endrick by the way is a complete joke. His team won the title and some of the performances he put in were insane. Haaland, Mbappe and Bellingham are expected to be challenging for the Balon d'Or, but wow this guy has explosiveness that hasn't been seen in a while. His shooting power is absurd! Looks like the best player from Brazil since Neymar. We shall find out in the new decade how he fares!

Gabriel Moscardo is their big talent, who looks set for PSG. Marcos Leonardo is an interesting one, he's been linked with West Ham and Roma in the past. He'd actually be a very good signing for us on paper, because my understanding is that he drops deep to help link up the play. He's 5ft 9, which is short for a striker, which is perhaps why other teams haven't taken a chance. In our system, height isn't that important. I expect he goes to a big club in the January window though.

This game was fascinating to see from a tactical perspective. This was the most dominant display seen against Man City in years, the score does not reflect the way the game went. Villa were superb! Some notes from me: Since Emery came in, Villa have been incredible, with Champions League possibly even league winning from. He's turned them into a top team. Man City had more possession in this game, but not that much more. This is an 8% difference in possession between the two teams, whereas when one team has a 60-40 split, that's a 20% difference which is much, more meaningful. I bet after the game Pep was upset with those statistics. Man City had possession, but rarely in dangerous areas. Villa play a really high line, so often this means that the opposition has the ball in areas of the pitch that aren't dangerous. Villa themselves play out of the back and have a technical style. But it's not as restrained as Man City. As I've said before, personally I like teams that have a lot of the ball, but do something with it. I understand what Maresca is trying to do with his system, but think we could create more chances if made some tweaks. But hey, that's just my opinion!

I agree. For a lot of the games it feels like we are playing with a man down, because they are nether attacking the box nor linking up play. But this could be a case where after a while it starts to click. Arsenal finished 8th, 8th, 5th and 2nd under Arteta and look like having a great chance to win the Premier League this season. In those seasons where they finished 8th they didn't look too good and fans were asked to "trust the process". For Arsenal, certain players really transformed them; Odegaard, Saka, Saliba and this season Rice. Even Gabriel Jesus who despite not being that prolific definitely improved them a lot when he first signed. Enzo Maresca did make the best start to a Championship season ever, those are facts. So I think he deserves time to get things right. We can be critical, I know I am, but there is a lot to see already to get excited for.

His point is that if you attack too quickly, you lose the ball on the transition, and you concede because your players aren't back / in position. English football has morphed big time over the last decade to become the most transitional league of them all. In most games these days, most goals are scored because the opposition made a mistake and concede 10-20 seconds after that mistake was made. The goal Winks scored shows the mistake in WBA's play; they committed too many players forwards and were too impatient to try and score the goal, so as soon as they lost it, they were in big trouble. Enzo's point would be that it's perfectly fine to attack with lots of players, but it's better to build the attack patiently so if something goes wrong, you aren't totally screwed. Try to make some short passes and engineer the chance, rather than just sending it into the mixer and leaving it to the footballing gods. I'm not saying I subscribe to this school of thinking, I'm just taking what he's said and what we've seen so far. If it was down to me, I would have our team attack more often! Time to load up the latest Football Manager for me! Enzo's football at his best, as shown with KDH's goal on Saturday attacks quickly, with verve and gusto. But it relies on patient play so that we attack when the spaces appear, and hold it when they don't.

Both of our strikers have scored a decent amount of goals. When we attack, we have at least 5 players attacking the box at the same time, so there's lots of options to pick out, plus the opportunity to pick up the second ball. Arsenal last season (less so this) play in quite a similar way to us with a 3-2-2-3 shape when attacking, and the net result is that many players score goals. They had 4 players who scored more than 10 goals (2 scored 15) and even Xhaka scored 7. Jesus who was their striker did hit double figures and if he wasn't injured would probably have hit more. Klopp's best Liverpool team also used Firmino to play as a false 9 and they scored tons. Firmino himself also scored a lot, even if the main men were Mane and Salah. The point of contention for fans is that if the team just passes it around in a horseshoe for most of the game and isn't seen to be attacking, then fans are going to get fed up pretty quickly if the results aren't coming in.

Thank you so much! I wanted to go, but a midweek trip back home (I live in London these days) in early December just wasn't possible. The bit about keeping the ball, I don't have a problem with that because you literally cannot concede a goal if you have possession of the ball. And it's not like we don't want to attack, the idea is to attack at the right time. Not attacking quickly is very interesting, and that is the aspect of his play the fans don't like. Me included! But I guess we will all have to get on board with it. He did say before the WBA game that it was important for the team to keep the ball even more than they did in previous games before making an opportunity, specifically saying "if we keep it for 2 minutes, we need to keep it for 4!" This is to make the opposition fans quiet and tire out the other team. If we use that time on the ball to construct a meaningful attack then it's all good, but many times we put 20 passes together, it goes all the way back to Hermansen, and he just kicks it long anyway . If someone tries a killer pass, a cross or someone takes a shot, at least the loss of possession is worthwhile! But overall, I do get the underlying reasons for his style. If you maintain the ball and have control of the game that consistently, you will pick up a LOT of points. Man City have not been the only dominant force in English football history, but they reach points tallies that even the great Man United, Liverpool and Arsenal teams would struggle to reach.

If you look at the underlying data, we are 2nd top scorers, so this says to me that we are clinical as opposed to being a team that is excellent at chance creation. At least that's the situation as of today. Maresca references Man City as being the best team that plays a similar style to us, and they score tons of goals. Whilst it's true they have amazing players, they are also very well coached for long periods of time and often times new players don't hit the ground right away but find their feet after a bit of time as they get used to the system. So I'm hoping we will see a similar situation play out here, as at the very least we clearly see multiple attacking patterns of play every match. However, as of today I think it's fair to say that we are not as creative as other teams in the division.

Seeing this is a bit like having your homework marked when it comes to the info posted in this thread! I think overall, most of his setup is covered comprehensively by the main posters here, so well done to all. Things that I think we did not cover in quite as much detail are: We try to defend as a 5 without dropping the inverted player back to full back to give us better coverage on the transition. That allows us to press high man-to-man when we lose the ball. We drop the inverted player back if the opposition makes a few passes and plays out of trouble. We drop our 9 deep into midfield to make another box midfield against certain setups, specifically 4231 setups. It's a shame we don't see him comment on what we could be doing to improve in, but it's still a great video that I hope a lot of our fanbase gets to see.

Yes!!!!! This is the equivalent of top-shelf material for people like me. My forearm is going to be massive after watching this one

There's definitely an argument to say that signing players now means we are better prepared to make a strong start if we get promoted. Learning the system for 6 months plus pre-season is surely going to get players far more ready than signing them in the summer. Of course, should the worst happen, it might be a financial gamble. But even then you could probably do what Leeds did and loan players to bigger clubs to get them off the wage bill or just resell them for at least what you paid for them.

That's £17.15M. Very expensive, and I imagine a Championship record if it happened. But we need a left sided CB that can play as a hybrid left back / LWB for the Enzo system. Doyle is out injured, and that price could well be the same amount Man City want for him. So signing a player that can play right away with resale value for the same price... is not crazy. Norwich signed Sara from the same club (Sao Paolo) for 11M the first season they went down and though they haven't gone up yet, he has been easily one of their best players. Looking at those clips... you can see exactly why we'd want him. Plays those progressive through the channel passes and cross-field switches exquisitely. His passing is brilliant!

To be fair, I haven't seen many people call our passing style any of those things in any of our games. It's pretty clear to all how effective they can be. The thing is that is a highlights video, so it looks great in a condensed form, but it's not like that's how we play for the entirety of the 90 minutes. If you look at Saturday's match, we had 3 shots on target and one of them was the goal right at the end after a suicidal attack from WBA. So my issue isn't with the patterns of play as this entire thread is dedicated to it! My issue is that we aren't creating enough chances through this style of play yet.

Compilation of nice moves within the Enzo system from the WBA match. Still think we need to use this build up to make more high quality chances, but hoping it happens in the next few months.

Southampton and Leeds are following that “malarkey” so I think you’ve had the mare not me. Southampton in their opening 10 games lost 5-0 away and 4-1 at home but are now on an unbeaten 12 game run. Leeds had poor results in their opening 10 but have turned the corner big time since then. All 3 relegated sides share similarities; new managers and large player turnover. When a new coach comes in with a whole new style and / or massive player turnover it takes time to gel the players with that style. Which is why results and performances are often indifferent to begin with before reaping rewards later, like Burnley last season. If this is so hard to follow then I’m not really sure what to say.

The problem is that if your dog pisses on you instead of taking a dump, your clothes still stink!

One more thing. You may notice that in recent weeks I've been a lot more critical. That's because after 19 games, I feel like we've regressed a bit: Southampton started off horrifically, but Russel Martin has tidied up their defence and got them firing in goals. He has clearly fixed and improved that team after a rough start. Leeds are scoring lots of goals and picking up points. They do have the occasional bad game, but having less of them, and are playing an exciting and enthralling style of play. Ipswich have been consistent throughout the season, scoring lots of goals against everyone. Leicester started off indifferently, then went on a great run where it looked like we had cracked it, and now seem a bit like the start of the season again. We are getting over the line, but the last "statement" victory was probably Southampton or Norwich away. Maybe the WBA game could be considered a statement victory, but not for me given how it ended. I expected games 1-10 to be rough. Then games 11-20 to be OK. Then from game 21 onwards to really start hitting form. Leeds and Southampton if anything match this prediction, whereas Leicester seem to have been consistent in "winning in second gear" and "picking up points whilst looking unimpressive." At the end of the day results are the most important thing, but it feels like the next bad result is just around the corner, when just a month ago it seemed like promotion was a total formality.

West Brom 1 - 2 Leicester A dramatic ending to a well-contested and pretty even game. West Brom are a high-pressing team in general (Coberan was Bielsa's assistant at Leeds) and played as such today. They very specifically targetted Winks and Ricardo, as all teams do, but those two at times were 2v4, as one of them receiving the ball was clearly the pressing trigger for the Baggies Overall, the two of them dealt with it well, though disappointingly playing through that press didn't lead to chance creation from our end. West Brom would then ease off a bit with their press, but press again once we got past the centre circle. The Leicester press was pretty effective, turning the ball over high up the West Brom defence on several occasions. The biggest difference between the teams for me was that West Brom weren't as good as playing out of the press as us, so overall this led to us having the majority of control during the game. That said WBA had their moments. I felt we started the better of the two teams, then they had a good 10-15 minute spell of being in the ascendancy and hitting the post, before we ended the first half very strongly, perhaps even taking the lead with better decision-making from Ihenacho. In the second half we controlled the game again but struggled with chance creation. The game-changer was Fatawu, though IMO it was good to have McAteer and Fatawu on at the same time. McAteer might not have the pace, power or trickery as the other wingers, but his overall decision making is really good, and the team functions much better with him in the team. Fatawu and Ndidi were combining well, the goal was exactly how this system is supposed to work and the sort you see Man City and Arsenal score, Ndidi goes from central, sprays it out to Fatawu, who plays it into the inside 8 half-space, Ndidi stands up a great first time cross, and the other 8 arrives in the box to head home. Training ground stuff and very nicely done. 3 of our players were in the 6 yard box, and 5 in total attacked their box for the goal. After taking the lead, we seemed content to play for 1-0, but that handed the initiative to West Brom. I feel we are too negative when taking the lead, and the last two games have been the first time we've been punished for it. We were too cute in defending their goal, with such little time left to play, clearing our lines is important, though the tactical principle from Maresca is to control the game via possession of the ball, so that's why Ricardo tries to control it. West Brom were suicidal with their attempts to get a winner. They were definitely on top and it felt like they were going to score... their turn to experience a Deeney Day like moment... That stats suggest a narrow victory was just about the right score, but we both had 9 shots, 3 on target despite having 20% of the ball. Ipswich and Leeds have scored more goals than us, and the way they play will continue to score more. We have a better defence, and generally defence is what wins league titles, but my consistent criticism of Enzo's style is that we don't create enough chances. What I will say is that compared to Rodgers, I do see clear attacking patterns of play from rehearsed moves that show up in almost every game. But so far the execution isn't quite there. But this is a team with easily the best squad in the division, if we are struggling to execute in this league, well if we do get promoted... Overall, there was a lot to like from this performance, but even playing like this, we will drop a lot of points. It just doesn't bully teams enough. The bet will be that the more we play, the better we will get at it, and I suppose the two takeaways from today's match are 1) we won! and 2) the overall performance was more up to the standard we'd expect. Remember that Ipswich went away to this ground and got soundly beaten, so in that respect, this result and performance may seem better than it seems right now. Just to put it out there, the alternative Maresca could try is more of a classic 433, allowing us to overload both flanks. One would think that in JJ and Ricardo we'd have two of the best fullbacks ever seen in this league... Anyway we are top of the league, so Enzo is doing the job at the moment. But I hope to see our chance creation improve. Brighton play a similar style of football to us, and they have some of the best chance creation stats in Europe, so with enough time, it's possible we could be a lot more potent up top.

Yep definitely, he was a contender for MOTM, but hard not to give it to KDH after the goal and assist. But I don't think it is as insane to think Vestergaard would be like this. He's basically a CDM playing as a CB because he's massive. Probably because he's not mobile he can't play as a sitting 6, though I think he might be quite good in a classic 4231 as a sitting pivot. In a system where you totally dominate the ball, he is excellent with his feet. Some of his passing was absoultely brilliant too. Jannik always had this ability, but was never used in a style or system to really show this outside of Germany. Him and Winks are good examples of players that are great in this system, but proven to be lacking badly in other systems.

Or just call her Harry and tell her to get used to it out of respect and love for or new number 8 idol.

Funnily enough I felt that today was one of his weaker games for us, he unusually gave the ball away cheaply a few times. That said he made some great attacking runs, carrying the ball forwards with aplomb. Brilliant workrate and determination at the end and the celebration... well we already fell in love with him, but now it's time to name your next kid Harry isn't it?!