StriderHiryu

I will do a small one tomorrow. There's seriously too many games to follow! Next international break I will do a summary of the season so far, looking back at preseason up until this point. I think this stat shows progress in the team, though TBH 2.36 seems pretty low for Liverpool!

Looks about as good as the other Chelsea signings made over the last two years so far Only a young lad so won't write him off, but given all the hurrah about chasing him, he's not really show it so far. Ndidi is deservedly in front of him, I think Praet was better till get got injured too. At this rate I can see Chelsea being willing to sell, but not us taking them up on that offer. But this was the toughest test he will have faced, so let's see what he can do against weaker opposition.

Which is good to see! He played decent. Casadei had a nightmare and couldn't deal with the pace all game. Yunus could, and can feel a bit hard done by because he was far from the worst offender.

That was a great strike to be fair. Almost took the net off. A definite improvement from us since the last time we played them, but still quite the gulf in class.

Agreed, I think he was more than decent. Liverpool is the ultimate test when it comes to playing against a physical, pressing team and he coped pretty well for the most part. It was funny how he got subbed after giving away his first loose pass though!

To be fair to the people saying it's suicidal, they more than have a point. But you can only improve at the style by doing it. If we have ambitions to be competing in Europe, then we have to be great on the ball. This is really encouraging to see.

Great game to watch. We are totally riding our luck, but the difference between pre-season and now is incredible. This may not be their strongest team, but it's not our strongest team either. Give this side the whole season and when we're back in the Premier League, we will surprise a fair few teams. Playing through Liverpool's press might seem insane, but the only way to improve is to test yourself against the best!

The first passage of play in that clip highlights the biggest improvement I've observed in recent games, our ability to sustain attacks. The first cross in makes a chance, but is defended, but we keep the ball with Fatawu who recycles it inside their box to keep us on the ball and make another chance. There were times against Bristol where we had them under sustained pressure, and that was always going to lead to a goal. Against Hull we played through the lines well, but could not sustain our attacks. The way we are playing, someone is going to get a big tonking sooner rather than later.

A couple of reasons why all the managers from the Pep stable want a left sided CB: Can play the ball first time down the line to beat the press. Don't need to cut back in when being given the ball from the keeper. Can play the diagonal ball to the opposite side winger, like Doyle did for one of McAteer's goals. I've seen be it a big deal for Pep, Arteta, Kompany and now Maresca. Primarily, I think it's the issue of being pressed, that one extra step you might need could mean the difference between being able to play out or not. A huge shame for Doyle, who had started the season well. JJ probably comes into begin with, but I think we will see Ben Nelson being used in the last 10/20 for a bit to see if he's got what it takes.

Actually after reading that, I am a bit disappointed. It's just stats without any meaningful commentary or breakdown. Ah well, still useful to post!

Post this in the Tactics thread! This is great! I agree with you. The gap is getting huge! The number of teams that have never been in the PL is declining all the time, and that's why it was so refreshing that Luton made it. Ipswich have been in the top flight before, but it would still be great to see them make it along with us. Personally, I think it would be epic if Preston North End made it, but their underlying data suggests to me they will be lucky if they make the playoffs. You can be a really well run Championship club, but how do you compete with a team like us that has fully fledged internationals, some of which can only make the bench!? Our legacy to English football was to give every team out there hope. We did the impossible! Perhaps it wasn't a complete underdog story because Vichai was hardly short of a bob or two, but still it made people dare to dream. If the league is a farce and only 25 teams can ever have a shot of the Premier League, it's a sad state of affairs.

I know it’s Premier League but I think we need to look very closely at Burnley who walked the Championship last season but are struggling in the top flight. After promotion they signed quite a few new players so wonder if they aren’t as cohesive as before as a result? I don’t want to count chickens before they’ve hatched but not only have we been the best team so far, we probably have the highest ceiling too given players are still getting familiar with each other and the system. Kasey McAteer who is our top scorer / best player was rested and we play Fatawu instead! That’s basically cheating!

(Shamelessly found on their forums) Their fans deserve amazing credit, all that shite and still providing the banter. One of their fans made this : https://www.captiongenerator.com/v/2292938/russell-martin's-tactical-dilemma If I were them, I would sack Martin and bring in Warnock for the season. He's sort them out in no time at all.

He obviously isn't, but to give them some credit, there are some stats to make an argument for it: Ampadu has been great defensively and is helping them start a lot of attacks. In the last few seasons, Leeds have had a suicidal playstyle, so having a calm head that does the unsexy stuff probably is a big deal for them, and there aren't many in the division better at that side of the game. We use Winks totally differently. Winks may not win many tackles, but that's because it's not really his job. In fact, if he is winning tackles, it means something has gone wrong, because he's supposed to be receiving the ball in space and playing it round the corner. However, in terms of the actual best player in the division. Well, I think the answer might surprise you, because it did surprise me. The best player, and TBH it's not even close, is this guy: To be in the top 7% of players in 11 separate categories is frankly... ridiculous. Even more so because we all think he could be a lot better, which given his ability and standard is true! He's definitely been a LOT better since the international break though, that has been obvious. But these stats don't lie, and that's the reason why teams like Liverpool were sniffing around. Finally, what about the revelation of the season, Wilfred Ndidi? Now that is a really interesting one, and unfortunately there isn't that much data about him in his new role. FBRef has his last 365 data but not his Championship only data, whereas it does for the other players. The best I could find is this from SofaScore: Green is KDH, so other than defensive actions, we see KDH is the all round better player. No real surprise there I would say, though perhaps the data is lagging because Ndidi has been one of the more consistent players this season I think. When his FBRef data is available for just this season, it will be super interesting to see where he ranks, that's for sure. All that said, if you asked me I would say that Harry Winks has been our player of the season by some distance. I jokingly say he wears 8 on the shirt because 8/10 is what you'll get from him every game!

It's a shame we got such a hard team this early on. If we got them in the Quarters or Semis (assuming we got that far), by that time we could have really given them a game. To be honest, I feel like we could give them a hell of a game now, but it seems like there's too much to risk putting in a guts and glory effort when the games come so thick and fast for us in the league. You'd expect a loss, but I wouldn't put it past us to cause a surprise here. They probably don't care about this cup, given they've got Europa this season. I think they will play a strong team, but it will be players that aren't so familiar with the system yet. The problem is, we will probably do the same thing!

I was pretty disappointed by Pearson's approach to the game. They had just come off a great performance and result where they played some sublime stuff. They were 6th in the table too. But they didn't even try! They will say it was a narrow loss, but truth be told they were never in the game. Hull got credit, but they weren't that good either. Warnock did the best job so far, he dared to go man for man against us, and it almost worked. One of the Bristol fans in the post match thread said "enjoy your holiday in the EFL" and I think he's got a point

I knew they were good on the day, but Fatawu and Ndidi really had great games today, at the heart of a lot of what was good about us. Everyone is rightly praising Ndidi, there's so much he did that was so good in this game: Pass through the pocket for Fatawu where he almost finds Vardy. Plays a dummy (!) to leave it for Fatawu. Played a great cross for Vardy who almost scored. Backheeled it (!) for Fatawu to cross it in. Wins the penalty. That's just in these clips, he did even more than that in the game and should have scored himself. I actually feel a bit sorry for Casadei and Praet who would have thought they were ahead of him in the pecking order!

Leicester City 1 - 0 Bristol City This was a pretty straightforward match to analyse, and can be summed in one picture: Bristol City came for a 0-0. They parked the bus ! Bristol played a 4231 but in reality it was two banks of 4 with the occasional tepid focussed press around the halfway line that Vestergaard quickly dealt with and sent them back to their shell. They had a compact shape with less than 18 yards between defenders and midfielders. Often times they had all 11 men behind the ball and in their own third. On occasion, they tried to play in Nahki Wells on the break, but he was too slow and too clunky with his touch to make anything stick. Matty James did on occasion make a good forward pass, but with no real outlet, there wasn't much he could do. The game very quickly descended into Attack vs Defence In our system against these teams it's notable that Callum Doyle pushes up much further than Faes to make us even more attacking. Bristol chose to try and double up on him at times with Tanner pushing up. Doyle is the player this season so far that teams are targetting the most after Ricardo to try and disrupt Leicester. However, this meant that Mavididi was always free and Wout Faes found him with the diagonal countless times in the first half. Possibly an area we could improve, with the pitch positions confirming it, is that KDH and Mavididi sometimes seem to play in the same space. Perhaps we need to make a bit more of a gap between them, with KDH going more central? We once again see the ridiculous engine from KDH, the furthest man forward on average again. His stamina is insane. The game also had another interesting subplot, Cameron Pring the Bristol City left-back versus Abdul Fatawu. Bristol left him one on one against Fatawu, who clearly had the beating of his man. I felt sorry for Pring, and was surprised Pearson persevered with this, because it looked time and time again that a goal would come from it. The star of the show for me was Wilfred Ndidi, not just for his goal, but his all round play. He was making things happen and setup several good opportunities. His stats don't look that crazy, he had 40 less touches than KDH, fewer key passes and fewer successful passes, but this doesn't tell the full story. It was a very accomplished performance from him. The biggest difference in this game compared to the Hull one was our ability to sustain attacks. I will try and post some GIFs later, but even if we didn't score, we kept the pressure ramped right up. Early in the second half there was a point where the Bristol centre backs were high-fiving one another for keeping the ball out. At that point, I felt like they were just delaying the inevitable. Our ability to recycle the ball was much better after an attack failed. We were much better at changing our angle of attack if the initial attempt wasn't on. We were still quite wasteful in my opinion, but kept at it. It's noticeable how at the ground and even on these forums, fans weren't getting bored but anticipating the goal coming as the pressure ramped up. Maresca is winning the fans over! At 1-0, Bristol did have one really good chance at the end. Perhaps the one thing Maresca will be unhappy with is that we caused ourselves some problems we didn't need to. But that's clutching at straws and it would have been Criminal if Bristol City scored. I expect to see most home games go this way, teams playing for a 0-0. So it was great to see that our patient approach did work. Really, that is as comprehensive a 1-0 as you will see all season. An impressive all-round performance.

It's a 46 game season, we were always going to get injuries. I wouldn't be surprised if even with our squad, we are thin in January with AFCON and tons of games to play. In some ways it might even give other players a chance to stake their claim in the team, like McAteer and Vestergaard have done.

That’s probably the weakest part of his new game but once the confidence comes they’ll start going in. He had a tame shot at the keeper in the second half I thought he was going to score from. But I can see those going into the back of the net come Christmas.

If Stephy could finish, he'd be the best player in the division. I hope the coaches can get it out of him, because he is the type of player that could and should be scoring hat-tricks at times in this division. Finishing aside, the rest of his play is good. If we can get him scoring he can be a Premier League player IMO.

It probably sounds wild, but I would sign this guy permanently already. It might still take him a few seasons for it to all really gel together, but he has all the attributes. This guy is good enough for the Premier League. He seems like a nice guy too, he works hard for the team, and look at his celebration when Wilf won the penalty! Not a hint of arrogance about him.

He's managed us for 10 competitive games now. Won 9, lost 1. The 1 we lost was to a lucky goal. We've seen us improve week on week, the discovery of an academy star, the repairing of Jannik Vestergaard and the reinvention of Wilfred "Don't call me Yaya" Ndidi. Fantastic appointment! EDIT: Oh and the best defence in the league!

We are the best team in the league. That was to be expected, but it's nice to know it's true. Ipswich are the biggest story though: ^ These are really impressive underlying metrics. They aren't getting lucky in many of their games, they are winning deservedly. Maresca and McKenna are clearly the standout coaches in this division. ^ Here's Preston's stats before today. By contrast to us and Ipswich, they have been getting lucky against teams. Their defence it has to be said is kind of absurd, that is definitely impressive. But you can see what they give up in order to achieve that, they simply don't carry enough of a goal threat. At this rate it's hard not to see Leicester and Ipswich as the top 2. The next most dangerous team according to the data would be Leeds, so it's great we already have a gap on them.

Glad you both enjoyed it! I found it interesting throughout. Even in the first half, the game was a bit like playing a puzzle game on your phone. You've got to work your way through the maze to complete the level! When we appointed Maresca the thing I was most happy with is that it was a manager who knows how to break down a deep block, because most teams will come here for the 0-0. It means you need a calm manager who knows how to create a system that makes chances even against defensive teams. And that is exactly what we've got!