StriderHiryu

On paper I thought this kind of system would suit his playstyle, but it doesn't at all. Ndidi as an attacking 8 is a standout success and honestly a piece of managerial genius. Kelechi as a false 9... less so.

Ha ha ha, I know what you mean! At the same time, if you are watching the match by yourself, then this forum feels like you are watching it with your mates or at the pub, and that is a nice thing. Personally I love it when people post memes / gifs / animated emojis on here after a goal goes in or something dramatic happens. There are also plenty of decent comments that are both critical and positive. The shorter ones actually tend to be the best. But sometimes it feels overly toxic in there, and just not a very nice place to be. Believe it or not we won that game today, but you wouldn't have thought it reading the thread back

Nail on the head! We can be negative when there's a 2 or 3 goal cushion, but when there's just one, anything can happen.

Deliberately stayed out of the match thread, it gets really toxic in there. In general, I think we played a pretty good game against a clearly very well coached team that showed why they've been in great form recently. For me, in this game we had a lot more nice attacking patterns of play and team moves, which was great to see. Like most fans though, I don't think we create enough chances and that's what makes the games always feel like they are on a knife-edge and why make things hard for ourselves. And I feel like the lack of chances is because of the manager's philosophy. I don't think it's as pedestrian or sideways as under Rodgers or Puel, but many times in the game it feels like we could be a bit more direct in the final third to make things happen. That said, the KDH goal was a good advert for what happens when the rehearsed patterns of play work. Great result, I think on the overall balance of play we did deserve the win, but lucky to get away with it. One thing that is both worrying and bizarre is that after we score, we aren't good at controlling the game, even though we spend the entire match up to then doing exactly that!

Football... bloody hell!

Will come across as negative but on current form I’d have the Baggies as slight favourites. I’d hope we can put in a statement performance and win here. We absolutely have the players to do it, but we need to go up the gears big time.

Sadly he’s been a dud. I’m not one to dig out young players, he might become very good in time. However, as of today he feels like a real luxury signing. He’s not even our player, so we’re using a slot in the team to develop a player who is actively making us worse! I’ve got no problems with loans; Youri Tielemans was on loan from Monaco and was outstanding. But Casadei isn’t doing it at all. Ndidi and KDH did more in 5 minutes than he did in the entire match.

I strongly disagree with that statement. We aren't passive when trying to play through the press, it's just a bit too hit and miss so far, and we get caught on the ball or play it into trouble. We struggle against a high press because we aren't good enough at playing through the press consistently yet. But some of our best moves come from doing this, so we can see the potential. Where I agree we are passive is in the mid-block. After the first 20 minutes, Wednesday only pressed us when we went past the halfway line. That's what is catching us out; we don't have enough space to play through the press with verve and we aren't imaginative on the ball to work the space. This can be solved by working on some patterns of play to shift players around in their mid block and this is the thing we need to get better at. When people say "we've been figured out" this is what they mean. Go man-to-man, deny space to Ricardo and Winks, press us around the middle of the pitch. Leicester then have a lot of the ball but don't threaten...

You are definitely the voice of common sense, so good on you for doing that. We can both be critical and defend the manager, and that's my stance. It takes a long time to really get a style to gel, and the manager deserves that time. But we can also say that recently he's made a few missteps and the team has underperformed.

I think the opposite, they will back him in the window after the start he made. I am less than impressed after our recent run of games, and shared some of my thoughts on Beyond the 90. It takes time to coach a certain style, but if anything we seemed to have regressed, with not so many clips of great attacking sequences being posted on here in recent weeks. In this game, we made 6 changes and that will affect the fluency of any team. Had we started with the team we finished with, I think we win that game. But this is a squad game, especially in this division, so we have to rotate players. I expected a lot of rough games this season, but thought it would be bad results mixed with elements of good play in those bad results. But the season has been the opposite for the most part, great results but not very good performances. We want Enzo to be the man that makes a style even more impressive than Roberto di Zerbi at Brighton! But it feels a long way off that at the moment. There's no need to overreact at the moment, but I don't think that anyone being critical can be chastised after the last 5-6 games, the performances on the pitch haven't been there. Next game is a real test for us. The Baggies are one of the form teams in the division, with a great defence. They even restricted free-scoring Ipswich to next to nothing. So let's see how he bounces back from this one. But as it stands, there is some serious work to do. Instead of this style, he could play a 433 with a single pivot in Ndidi. That style would not work in the Premier League, but it would piss this division easily with the players that we have. That's why when people say we are winning in spite of our tactics instead of because of them, then objectively I would say they are correct.

I definitely agree with this. Against teams we know we are vastly superior to in a man for man setting, we don't need to play so much of a controlled style.

I don't think that's even a subjective opinion, I would say objectively it's true. A style of play takes time to bed in, so on paper it can still be good to persevere with these tactics because when we finally become masters of it, we could become an excellent team. However, we've had way too many subpar performances for a while now. It's not just results, look at wins against QPR and Sunderland, these were hardly impressive. We are still top of the league, so have to be happy, but it is concerning that we aren't getting better. If anything, I would say we are worse than that run of games where we pasted Southampton and beat Norwich, etc.

We played badly, but we have made 6 subs, so it should be expected that we lose fluency and look kind of ropey. IMO this is why it was a good idea to make so many subs for this game, because we need to give minutes to squad players who will have a big part to play in the next 2-3 months and the team rooted to the bottom of the league is the team to do it against. The surprising thing is that it's our playing out from the back that has been awful, and the mistakes have not been made by squad players. Ricardo after 20 seconds, Vestergard and Hermansen all made some awful mistakes, and with the amount of game all of these guys have played, they shouldn't be. Anyway with our squad even if we get into trouble we can make the changes if needed. Yunus Akgun for me looks terrific so that has been good to see.

I'll just ignore the fact that Wednesday should have scored 3 goals by now.

I'm a simple man. I don't come here for the discussion, I don't come here for the banter... I come here for the MEMES

He's a classy player. Great awareness, first touch and passing. I prefer him in this central position personally.

@Daggers where is that Fatawu meme when we need it?!

Peak Brendan-ball on show last night. That's what really boring football looks like!

Look what's happened to Arsenal this season. Since they got so good, everyone plays a low block against them, hence they seem to be a lot more boring to watch than last season. That said I think we can go through the gears a bit faster. The next 2 months will be interesting to see. There are so many games that all teams will be stretched physically and given our deep squad we might find a lot more spaces and teams being more open. Though I think it will just continue to be a case of "second half FC" as teams park the bus but can't maintain their defensive composure for 90 minutes.

Petition to change the thread title?

Yeah as said in my write-up, he made changes at 55 minutes and I felt that really kicked us on a gear.

I hope it's something like that. I know we had a lot of players to replace, but I do worry that with so many loan signings that when we end up in the Premier League we have to replace 4-5 starters meaning we lose all the fluency built up this season. But I suppose that even if such a deal was agreed, they would only agree to the additional 12 months IF we get to the Premier League. This guy is considered one of the best talents in South American football, so will be an exciting one to see play if he ends up here. Being left-footed I guess he will rotate with JJ until Doyle is back, but he could play as winger or one of the number 8's. With the way Pep plays, I could see him being used in the Ricardo style role, which would be a good reason to send him here, IE being an inverted CB that is highly comfortable on the ball.

Lots of teams in the top 6 dropped points this weekend, nay of them had lethargic performances. The reason? International Break disrupted the rhythm of a lot of teams, us included. What did you think about the second half performance? Many of us don't like the overly slow and patient approach. But do you enjoy our play when we ramp up the pressure? For me, when we step it up, we are very good to watch and it's enthralling and entertaining. However, I definitely think we wait too long before getting into our flow. I do think there's a lot to be said about playing your way into games, and it's hard to be 100% right from the get go, but often I feel like the first 20-30 minutes we do nothing at all ! I don't think that's intentional from Enzo though, and we should note he's only been here 6 months now, and only just started the squad transformation.

That is mental! The Ipswich game on paper looks like a big one, but honestly in some of these games, the team will quite simply be "who is still standing" as opposed to "what is our best team." That said, this should be where our unfair advantage of having such a strong squad kicks in. This will be a big month for players like Akgun, Casadei, Praet, Coady, Choudhury and more. They will get lots of minutes and have the opportunity to make a name ofr themselves. We might even see minutes given to some fresh faces like Cannon and Alves, maybe Wanya comes back in for a game or two as well.