StriderHiryu

This football is damn sexy!

This lot are playing even deeper than Preston! Vestergaard our CB is playing 25 yards in their half with the ball. Mental.

Yeah that's why I think Souttar is in. Plus hopefully he does the classic and scores against his old club!

Yunus on left wing and Itawu on the right or vice versa?

Good question! Even if opponents aren't running as much as we are, they will still get tired. One of the first things to go when you are tired is your concentration and ability to make the right decisions. Our team might also be tired, or even more tired, but if the opposition is making block after block and pinned back, their mistakes are more catastrophic than ours. We do also make mistakes due to tiredness. See Faes getting away with one late one against Preston. We change a lot of players after an hour who are fresh against those tired legs. We also often give them new problems to deal with, for example against Preston, Ndidi started as the left sided 8, and KDH as the right. But after an hour they swapped over. For their defenders a simple thing like now having to force their direct opponent down the other way gives them another thing to think about, and they are already tired having to concentrate. We move wingers around too, Fatawu started on the left but ended on the right for example. Overall, it is the mental side that we tire out, as you've written!

Leicester City vs Stoke City Pre-Match After a decent first 4 games, Stoke have tailed off recently... This is a very difficult team to analyse, they really seem like a team that are all over the place, with frequent changes to players and formations. They are on a poor run of form, with 4 losses in their last 6, and their one win involved a comeback from 2 goals down in a game that Bristol City and Nigel Pearson will feel aggrieved to lose. The Southampton game had a really strange look to it. Looking at those average pitch positions, I assumed they were going man for man, but looking at the extended highlights, that doesn't appear to be the case. The tactics looked like they were trying to compact play centrally and suffocate the game. They lost at home to Ipswich early in the season before anyone realised quite how good they were, and in that one they did try 4231, which is maybe why they tried something different in this one. This was the first game Southampton got a clean sheet, but Stoke were denied a pretty obvious penalty. That aside, Stoke have struggled in front of goal this season, with only 11 goals from their 10 games so far. The Bristol game is a much more familiar 4231 with fullbacks pushed high to provide the width. Stoke seem a bit like a Championship version of themselves in the Premier League. Too good to go down, not good enough to challenge for the play-offs. Mid-table purgatory awaits. Based on what I've seen from them, I think they will turn up with a 4231, but play rather cautiously. Not as cautiously as Preston or even Bristol, but maybe more like Cardiff where they try but struggle against our Premier League quality players who are stuck in the Championship. I think they will defend their positions rather than go for man-to-man. If they try to compress play centrally I think they would get destroyed by our wide players, but there is a certain logic in trying that against teams that try to overload midfield with an inverted player like both Southampton and us do. Anything can happen in this division, but it's hard not to see anything other than a fairly comprehensive home victory here. Stoke have only 1 clean sheet all season, are horrible away from home, and struggle to score. If we aren't complacent, we should find a way to win.

Leicester City vs Stoke City Pre-Match After a decent first 4 games, Stoke have tailed off recently... This is a very difficult team to analyse, they really seem like a team that are all over the place, with frequent changes to players and formations. They are on a poor run of form, with 4 losses in their last 6, and their one win involved a comeback from 2 goals down in a game that Bristol City and Nigel Pearson will feel aggrieved to lose. The Southampton game had a really strange look to it. Looking at those average pitch positions, I assumed they were going man for man, but looking at the extended highlights, that doesn't appear to be the case. The tactics looked like they were trying to compact play centrally and suffocate the game. They lost at home to Ipswich early in the season before anyone realised quite how good they were, and in that one they did try 4231, which is maybe why they tried something different in this one. This was the first game Southampton got a clean sheet, but Stoke were denied a pretty obvious penalty. That aside, Stoke have struggled in front of goal this season, with only 11 goals from their 10 games so far. The Bristol game is a much more familiar 4231 with fullbacks pushed high to provide the width. Stoke seem a bit like a Championship version of themselves in the Premier League. Too good to go down, not good enough to challenge for the play-offs. Mid-table purgatory awaits. Based on what I've seen from them, I think they will turn up with a 4231, but play rather cautiously. Not as cautiously as Preston or even Bristol, but maybe more like Cardiff where they try but struggle against our Premier League quality players who are stuck in the Championship. I think they will defend their positions rather than go for man-to-man. If they try to compress play centrally I think they would get destroyed by our wide players, but there is a certain logic in trying that against teams that try to overload midfield with an inverted player like both Southampton and us do. Anything can happen in this division, but it's hard not to see anything other than a fairly comprehensive home victory here. Stoke have only 1 clean sheet all season, are horrible away from home, and struggle to score. If we aren't complacent, we should find a way to win.

Yep that will cost us in the Premier League, but it's something we can keep track of as the season goes by. I'd expect once we hit 2024 that these opportunities start drying up, other than when we make the mistake ourselves, those will always happen, even Allison, Ederson, etc make gaffes like that from time to time.

Not your imagination! First half that is exactly what happened, because Ricardo was supposed to be playing as the right sided 8. Enzo expected Preston to have 5 men back at all times, so he pushed Ricardo up to make it 6 v 5. But they didn't have 5 back (even though they did this in their last game), they had 4, meaning they had 4 midfielders. So his whole "idea" of having an extra man in the important part of the pitch didn't work. We have to give credit to Preston for coming up with that bait and switch tactic. Second half KDH was not as central, he was back to his "usual" position. I think Wilf wasn't that bad with his left foot, he got it down and played a few passes. The bigger issue is that neither he nor KDH were getting the ball much at all. But that's a subjective opinion.

No worries and good for picking him out! The new Maresca!

Is anyone good at photoshop? Please could someone photoshop this to put Maresca's head on this fine gentleman: After all we are all going up... THE MARESCALATOR!

That is a mistake from my end, I'll fix that up. The result of midnight analysis EDIT: Now fixed, thanks for pointing that out. Needless to say, it wasn't intentional.

I think you're getting a bit confused. First half he wasn't playing wide, he was a CAM, Fatawu was wide of him, KDH was more central. He was static because there was no room for anyone. It wasn't because he was lost. The formation was essentially 3-1-5-1 instead of the usual 3-2-4-1. When he got moved backwards, he was still in midfield as he has been all season, but was able to recieve the ball, turn and free up Winks, which in turn gave Ndidi and KDH space. He wasn't marauding, he was manipualting space with clever passes and reading the game. Nacho's first goal comes from Ricardo playing an excellent first time pass blind - IE without even looking. He is so positionaly aware of himself and his team mate he could play it that way.

Ipswich deserve massive praise. Maresca has been sensational and we are the best team, but it was likely we would be extremely competitive no matter who was in charge. Though you must say dodging Russell Martin was huge for the club. Kieran McKenna rightly deserves plaudits. Won 27 of his last 30 games across two divisions and beaten Premier League teams. They play great stuff and are riding high, all on a much more conservative budget. It’s possible for us as fans to support our own club and admire the job of others and it’s admiration I have for Ipswich. McKenna was interviewed for the job here but signed a new contract with Ipswich. There is a parallel timeline where he was appointed here and I suspect would also have done very well. Like Enzo, he is destined for greater things. I can’t see them matching us simply because their squad isn’t as deep as ours. That’s the unfair advantage we have over everyone else! But the games between the two teams should be thrilling. Other than the top two, Sunderland after a slow start have started to turn it on and have some very promising young players. Jack Clarke their star man so far. And Leeds are the ominous team to watch out for. Farke is proven at this level and they are building momentum. Their start is what I thought we’d see here, dropped points in the opening 10 but clearly on the right path.

This is by far the most impressive thing about the player, as decision-making is the hardest thing to get right in football.

Leicester City 3 - 0 Preston North End Post Match Although the pre-match prediction did pan out as such, more happened in this game than you might first have thought, which is why it was a classic case of "a tale of two halves" First Half Preston came to defend but sprung a surprise. They didn't defend 541, but 4411, as seen in the picture. Enzo made a change, he pushed Ricardo up as an auxiliary additional CAM to complement Ndidi and KDH. This is because he wanted a superiority in the final phase to make it 6 vs 5. However, Ryan Lowe second guessed this and had Duane Holmes man-mark Harry Winks. This is why we were so lethargic in the first half, and why Winks (who was one yellow away from missing the next match) was restricted. He didn't have the bounce pass on to play around the corner like he would do usually. The net effect was that KDH and Ndidi didn't receive the ball much. A problem of our own making... there was too much traffic! Wilf got it just 10 times in the first half! Take a look at the average pitch positions, all of our players got in each others way. We were playing too centrally and right into Preston's hands. When we tried to force play in the first half, this is where we turned the ball over and gave chances away. Coady was a prime offender in doing this. On current form you would play Vestergaard ahead of him for the CD quarterback role. Of course he is recovering from a fairly serious injury! Second Half We made one very simple change. We moved Ricardo back to deeper on the pitch in his usual double pivot role with Winks. At the same time, Preston were tired, they were chasing us the entire game, and had just 22% possession. Ndidi and KDH started to receive the ball and began to run the game. We scored with our first real opportunity, but it was a tired lunge from McCann who was tired. If we didn't score then, we had 30 minutes plus stoppages... it would have been hard for them to hold out for that long. This is especially true when the cavalry from the bench were sent on, with Iheanacho now free to drift between the lines as a false 9 having the freedom of the king Power. Overall This was the most defensive display a team has played against us for years. Tony Pulis for WBA during the home match against them in 2016 is the last time I remember something like this. Despite that, we kept it patient and found the answer. It's funny, as @cityfanlee23 and I were disappointed that we weren't going for it enough in the first half, but ironically we were poor in the first half because we were going for it too much! Actually, moving Ricardo BACKWARDS meant we were better at going forwards. Funny how football can work like that. Enzo Maresca is a top, top, TOP manager. This era is going to be really enjoyable. Forza Enzo!

Leicester City 3 - 0 Preston North End Post Match Although the pre-match prediction did pan out as such, more happened in this game than you might first have thought, which is why it was a classic case of "a tale of two halves" First Half Preston came to defend but sprung a surprise. They didn't defend 541, but 4411, as seen in the picture below. Enzo made a change, he pushed Ricardo up as an auxiliary additional CAM to complement Ndidi and KDH. This is because he wanted a superiority in the final phase to make it 6 vs 5. However, Ryan Lowe second guessed this and had Duane Holmes man-mark Harry Winks. This is why we were so lethargic in the first half, and why Winks (who was one yellow away from missing the next match) was restricted. He didn't have the bounce pass on to play around the corner like he would do usually. The net effect was that KDH and Ndidi didn't receive the ball much. A problem of our own making... there was too much traffic! Wilf got it just 10 times in the first half! Take a look at the average pitch positions, all of our players got in each others way. We were playing too centrally and right into Preston's hands. When we tried to force play in the first half, this is where we turned the ball over and gave chances away. Coady was a prime offender in doing this. On current form you would play Vestergaard ahead of him for the CD quarterback role. Of course he is recovering from a fairly serious injury! Second Half We made one very simple change. We moved Ricardo back to deeper on the pitch in his usual double pivot role with Winks. At the same time, Preston were tired, they were chasing us the entire game, and had just 22% possession. Ndidi and KDH started to receive the ball and began to run the game. We scored with our first real opportunity, but it was a tired lunge from McCann who was tired. If we didn't score then, we had 30 minutes plus stoppages... it would have been hard for them to hold out for that long. This is especially true when the cavalry from the bench were sent on, with Iheanacho now free to drift between the lines as a false 9 having the freedom of the king Power. Overall This was the most defensive display a team has played against us for years. Tony Pulis for WBA during the home match against them in 2016 is the last time I remember something like this. Despite that, we kept it patient and found the answer. It's funny, as @cityfanlee23 and I were disappointed that we weren't going for it enough in the first half, but ironically we were poor in the first half because we were going for it too much! Actually, moving Ricardo BACKWARDS meant we were better at going forwards. Funny how football can work like that. Enzo Maresca is a top, top, TOP manager. This era is going to be really enjoyable. Forza Enzo!

A certain previous manager could have learnt a thing or two from the new one...

With the notorious "Premier League Tax TM" those prices are very good. Yunus impressed me against Liverpool, which for me showed he could play in the Premier League. Maybe he's not a top 7 PL player, but 8M for a player that could play for a team between 8-12th place is a very good deal. He's played in 4 different positions now, and been quite good in all of them. Not yet exploded like McAteer or Ndidi but pretty solid. He is definitely having an impact when he comes on, and not too bad when starting either.

Yeah they actually went 442 with their defensive shape, so it was more crowded in the middle of the pitch than expected. I think Preston deserve credit for that first half, they could well have been in front. I feel like he could have made the tactical change earlier, but I suppose his whole thing is to be patient. He knew that a team like this would never be able to hold out for 90 minutes, our first goal comes from a tired lunge, and that was at 60 minutes.

I'm surprised we've not seen more of Yunus, whenever he comes on he looks good, getting involved it lots of goals either with the assist or pre-assist. £8M is it to buy him outright? I think we will buy him based on what I've seen so far. Despite his small frame, he can handle the physicality of the English game.

Best performance of the season from him, after that goal he was full of confidence.

He definitely backed out of a few challenges, the first time I've seen him do that.

A tale of two images: