StriderHiryu

Free Ricardo!

ELITE!

I wouldn't be that critical of him given it's Vardy who is through on goal, but your point is a valid one. Under Maresca not only did five men attack the box, but many of them got to the goal line so that if the keeper spilled it, they could pick up the second ball and score. So yes even in this system, I would encourage not just Ayew but in this clip Mavididi and even Buonanotte to box crash too. All that said, let's be honest, Vardy has to put that away, I feel like body language of Mavididi and Buonanotte is that they are expecting him to do so, he's probably doing it all week in training!

Cooper clearly heavily values physicality in his sides. When we’re under pressure and try to get out we’ll try to hit a long ball to JJ, Ndidi, Mavididi or Ayew on the flanks who will drift out there. Vestergaard we know is slow so if he wants to play a higher line then going with Okoli makes sense. Personally I think a good manager would find a way to use some of the most talented members of our squad, but I’m not in charge!

After that Arsenal game, I am sure Mads has balls of steel! But we'd have to ask his missus to confirm or deny it. I actually think he's a good baiter, but not yet at master level. If he met the 13 year old version of myself with all those lads mags, he would have met someone who had reached the "master" level

Not that I'm aware of, but to be honest I think most people in the media only have a surface level understanding of what's going on. What you've described there is the reason why you'd only attack with 4 instead of 5 and on paper there is nothing wrong with that decision. Where my criticism comes from though is that because it's the fullback that joins in, if we lose the ball when we attack on transition, we have a gaping hole down one side because the winger on that side has inverted in. Additionally by their very nature, a fullback is probably not going to be as good going forwards as a winger. So I feel we are neither getting the benefits of attacking with 5 nor having 6 back to defend on the counter transition. I think he's a hybrid of Okazaki and Albrighton. Hard working, wins challenges, can hold up the ball, can help get the ball up the pitch as an outlet and sets the tone. He's not useless by any means but when we get the ball back, he's not the best player to have when you have it, as he doesn't have the technical quality of Mavididi, Fatawu, Buonanotte, etc. That's what the second half metrics say for sure. He's got to stop parking the bus like that.

Our first win of the season! We made hard work of it, but a win is a win, and this result puts a little gap between us and the bottom 3. It's fair to say this was truly a game of two halves. We were pretty good in the first half, but totally sat back and invited the pressure on, a Cooper trademark, in the second. Check out the Momentum bar in the bottom left, that shows just how little of a threat we carried in the second half. However, it must be said that at the end of the first hald we had more possesion than Bournemouth and restricted them to only one chance from a set piece, whereas we scored and probably should have had a second from Vardy. It's just frustrating that we clearly decided not to keep playing that way in the second! ^ Our lineup had one change, but it was quite a big one. Harry Winks was dropped and Ayew came in. This mean Ndidi moved from a box crasher to be part of the double pivot and interestingly he was the one that sat deeper of the two compared to his midfield partner Skipp. Buonanotte played as the tranditional 10, with Ayew being the one that started out wide and drifted in, though these two did have fairly fluid roles and move a lot around the pitch. ^ Bournemouth made just one change from their team that easily beat Southampton, with Kluivert coming in for Outtara. I assume they did this to try to target Justin as he often gets left 2v1 on transition after a counter-press. ^ I was fearing the worst given our poor starts against Spurs, Villa and Everton, but credit where it's due, this was a good half of football from the Foxes! ^ Earlier this week I have been bemoaning our poor build up play this season, a stark contrast to last season. But it must be said that in the first 45 yesterday, we were much, much better at building out and this gave us a good platform to work with. Okoli and Faes have built a good partnership and are making a big impact in the way we play. ^ Very early on it was clear that more than any other game this season, we wanted to play out from the back. We knew Bournemouth play an aggressive press, specifically in the mid-block and that meant that being able to play our way out of trouble would be key. We lose the ball here, but Okoli makes an excellent line breaking pass here to Buonanotte, who should have passed to Mavdidi instead of Ayew. But for me this was promising to see, because this is why Arsenal totally dominated us last time round. ^ Here's an example of WHY passing out from the back is important. The first time Kristiansen picks up the ball, he hoofs it, trying to aim for Ayew along the wings, another trait of the build up in Cooper's system, however, the ball is intercepted. But the next time round, he plays the pass along the floor and the entire team combine with a sequence of passes to move up the pitch as a unit and threaten the Bournemouth backline. This was a good move, even if it amounted to nothing. ^ A few interesting things to pick out from this clip. First look how high the back 4 push on Bournemouth's goal kick. This is a lot more like last season and something we stopped doing in the second half. Moving the whole team up means we can win the ball higher up the pitch and turn transitions into dangerous moments. Once Buonanotte recieves the ball, well it's pure sauce isn't it!? He probably should have played Mavididi in, but after a run like that is entitled to a shot. This is good viewing. Vestergaard is great on the ball, but his lack of pace means playing a high line in the Premier League is somewhat suicidal. Okoli and Faes together mean we have the ability to recover if things go wrong, meaning we can compress the game much more and push the enitre team up. ^ This is one of the big changes under Cooper, and one that I am not a fan of. When we attack on transition, we only attack with 4 players, one of which will be the raiding fullback. What does this mean? It means a lack of options to play the ball to and an overall lack of threat. The fullback is also usually behind play because of the distance they need to make up. This is a shame because we have players in the squad that are very good on transition, and we were deadly on transition last season with those players. ^ Compare this to the 5 we attacked with under Maresca. This limits our attacks is a big reason why this season our overall xG is down. The argument for only attacking with 4 is to make the team more stable if we lose the ball like in the sequence above, however this is a misnomer because one of the players that is totally out of position on a turnover is the fullback, making for an obvious attacking angle for the opposition. ^ This might feel like a strange example to show, but this shows both the good and bad aspects of our team. Mads is really patient and baits Evanilson onto him before passing to Okoli. This is good and a throwback to last season where he did this to drag opposition players out of their shape. Where we go wrong is that Okoli needs to do better here and not just give the ball away. This is where Vestergaard is much better than him. However, Okoli allows us to play higher up and though his passing was inconsistent, he did make many good passes during the game. Overall I want to see us try and play out from the back a lot more. I know that just this weekend both Southampton and Ipswich came undone doing this, but the thing is that when teams press you up high, playing out fo the press totally opens up the game, as we will see later. ^ A big call with the starting lineup was to drop Winks and move Ndidi next to Skipp. Winks was the hearbeat of our team last season, but I don't think it's unfair to say he has not been in good form this time round. ^ Oli Skipp is really starting to find his place in the Leicester team. Here he receives the ball from Mads, turns, plays a one-two and almost slots in Vardy. He's mobile across the pitch, good at winning the ball back and has an abundance of energy. I think he's been a good signing that will be a lynchpin for the team for many seasons to come. Ndidi's ability to paly out from the back has gone under the radar and he's proved he is not bad at it even at Premier League level and with his physicality, it meant that certainly in the first half, we were able to get the better of the midfield battle. ^ Enzo Maresca last season said that if the back 5 play well, then the team plays well, as they give the entire team the platform to build on/ And that's what happened in the first half yesterday, as getting hold of the ball and building out meant we could feed an emerging superstar from this season, Facundo Buonanotte! Here's his first goal, which is a great goal all round. I am not Cooper's biggest fan, but this is an exciting template going forwards. Okoli and Faes allow for a higher line. Faes with what he does best, an aggressive challenge to win the ball back, but not that risky as Okoli is there in case he can't make it. Skipp and Ndidi are close to one another to allow for a bounce pass if needed to play the press, and to provide a stable core if the ball is lost. Two players combine on the touchline for a 2v1 overload. This is the core attacking pattern from Cooper's system. 4 on 4 in the box (but I preferred the 5 we attacked with last season) Buonanotte with the audacity to attack the box and go for it. This entire move comes from sustaining an attack where the first wave of the attack broke down. And this doesn't even talk about the killer finish from Facundo! Why we backed off in the second half I don't know! This was class. ^ Another great team move! Mads patient to bait the press and uses his CBs to get out keeping the ball Mavididi cool and calm under pressure. Okoli with a superb line-breaking pass to open up the game. High risk but high reward. Ndidi, Faes and JJ play good first time passes to keep the move flowing. Buonanotte with a good progressive carry and a superb pass to Vardy who should score! Only one bad thing about this move and that was the finish! This was reminscent of last season and was good football. Cooper is frustrating because we ARE capable of playing like this. But we aren't brave enough to try it more often. But credit where it's due, this was great to watch! ^ So the first half comes to an end and... we were good! Maybe you didn't like the line-up or the tactics, but objectively we were the better team, had played well, made chanced and more importantly had kept the Bournemouth threat to a minimum. Another 45 minutes like this and it would be a convincing home win... ^ A recurring theme under Cooper is to be extremely negative, very defensive and to protect a lead. Now at the end of the day, this approach worked and we won the game, but the underlying data suggests that we were lucky to get away with it, and that on paper, this should have been a draw (or worse), and this stepping off the gas is something that is obvious in every game we play. At half-time, Bournemouth took off Kluivert and replaced him with Outtara, a like-for-like sub. However, this one change was not the reason why we started defending deep. This screenshot it taken in the 57th minute that shows you how we've changed our approach and defended deep. Bournemouth themselves were more aggressive in the press, but all the nice clips that I've posted above, I have no clips like that for the second half. The manager has clearly instructed the team to sit on the lead. ^ At 63 minutes, Iraola had enough of the Leicester defensive setup and knew he had to try to change the game to get something from it. He changed his system as both fullbacks came off and Sinistera and Scott came on instead. ^ Looking at the positions those players picked up, Bournemouth moved to more of a 352 shape, which became even more obvious 10 minutes later when they brought on another striker to compliment Evanilson. ^ This is the change that Bournemouth made to their shape, though given the chaotic way they played, they were trying to turn the game into an even more chaotic one and try and press us into making unforced errors. ^ Here we see two of those subs combining. Alex Scott picks up the ball in midfield and after a few forward passes, the ball is played out to Sinistera, who beats Justin and Buonanotte and delivers a great cross, from which Outtara hits the bar. Despite the changes Bournemouth made, they did not open us up too many times in open play, but here they probably should have scored. ^ This is one of my biggest issues with Cooper. He takes too long to make meaningful substitutions and change the game after the opposition make big changes, such as strucutral ones. Bournemouth made 4 subs in the same time we had made one in Edouard. This would have been fine if we were coasting in the game, but we were already hanging on and had little to no outlet, with Vardy clearly flagging. ^ At 82 minutes, we changed Buonanotte and Mavididi. It's super frustrating that Cooper will never play both Mavididi and Fatawu at the same time, given that both are some of the best outlet players we have. However, these subs did help us see out the game, even though the two of them had mixed performances. ^ Fatawu was FINALLY deployed on the right hand side, and he had a few glimpses of real quality. He was able to beat his man several times and progress the ball up the field, thus taking the pressure of us. ^ However, what was a little frustrating is that he did a lot of the basic stuff right, but lacked some end product. The clip above was the most glaring example. A better pass here could have played Edouard in, and he was a little wasteful on other occasions. However, once he came on, the threat from Bournemouth was reduced a bit, showing that carrying a threat yourself is important even when trying to defend. ^ On our instant match reaction, I initially called out Reid as playing well when he came on, but watching the game back, this wasn't really true. He got caught on the ball a few times and this led to dangerous attacks from Bournemouth. It is hard for subs to get into the game late on, but this game ended a sequence of over 200 games where an academy product has been in the squad. Late in the game when you need hard work, running and fight, I would like to see Kasey McAteer come on, especially at home. ^ Overall here are my match thoughts. The first half was good and showed IMO not only can we compete at this level, but we can stay up. However, the dour defensive nature of our manager I feel holds us back and not only has it already cost us points, but it will continue to do so. ^ At the end of the day though, if the league finished today... well I would take 15th position all day every day. Stop the count!!! Results really went our way this weekend, and we opened up a 3 point lead over the relegation zone. In the next 3 we have Southampton, Forest and Ipswich. If we got 6 points out of those 9, that would put us on 12 points from 10 and that is surivival form. So let's hope we take this first win and build from there!

Here's the story of the game: We just compeltely sat off Bournemouth in second half, a Cooper trait. Iraola did switch things up in the 60th minute with attacking subs and a change of shape, but still the "Coward Cooper" moniker is getting used for a reason. That second half is rancid. Why aren't we capable of having a complete 90 minute performance? Well I would say the manager is a very big reason why, because a shift in approach like this is not coming from the players without instructions to do so.

Notice that all my clips come from the first half. This is a preview for my second half analysis when the thread goes live sometime tomorrow:

^ Another great team move! Mads patient to bait the press and uses his CBs to get out keeping the ball Mavididi cool and calm under pressure. Okoli with a superb line-breaking pass to open up the game. High risk but high reward. Ndidi, Faes and JJ play good first time passes to keep the move flowing. Buonanotte with a good progressive carry and a superb pass to Vardy who should score! Only one bad thing about this move and that was the finish! This was reminscent of last season and was good football. Cooper is frustrating because we ARE capable of playing like this. But we aren't brave enough to try it more often. But credit where it's due, this was great to watch!

^ Another great team move! Mads patient to bait the press and uses his CBs to get out keeping the ball Mavididi cool and calm under pressure. Okoli with a superb line-breaking pass to open up the game. High risk but high reward. Ndidi, Faes and JJ play good first time passes to keep the move flowing. Buonanotte with a good progressive carry and a superb pass to Vardy who should score! Only one bad thing about this move and that was the finish! This was reminscent of last season and was good football. Cooper is frustrating because we ARE capable of playing like this. But we aren't brave enough to try it more often. But credit where it's due, this was great to watch!

Great goal all round here. I am not Cooper's biggest fan, but this is an exciting template going forwards. Okoli and Faes allow for a higher line. Faes with what he does best, an aggressive challenge to win the ball back, but not that risky as Okoli is there in case he can't make it. Two players combine on the touchline for a 2v1 overload. This is the core attacking pattern from Cooper's system. 4 on 4 in the box (but I preferred the 5 we attacked with last season) Buonanotte with the audacity to attack the box and go for it. This entire move comes from sustaining an attack where the first wave of the attack broke down. And this doesn't even talk about the killer finish from Facundo! Why we backed off in the second half I don't know. This was class.

Great goal all round here. I am not Cooper's biggest fan, but this is an exciting template going forwards. Okoli and Faes allow for a higher line. Faes with what he does best, an aggressive challenge to win the ball back, but not that risky as Okoli is there in case he can't make it. Two players combine on the touchline for a 2v1 overload. This is the core attacking pattern from Cooper's system. 4 on 4 in the box (but I preferred the 5 we attacked with last season) Buonanotte with the audacity to attack the box and go for it. This entire move comes from sustaining an attack where the first wave of the attack broke down. And this doesn't even talk about the killer finish from Facundo! Why we backed off in the second half I don't know. This was class.

Serious question… how the **** is he not in your squad?! Brighton didn’t have that good season last year and you’ve signed lots of new players. But you have this guy! This is like when Monaco loaned us Tielemans. We watch him play and we can’t work out why he was allowed to leave. High quality, works hard, seems like a team player. You guys paid 40m for Rutter! Different positions but I just don’t get it. If we stay up we’ll be making a bid for sure.

Yeah that was pointed out in the above video actually! But I think the *team* looked better when he came on, despite his performance. But yes you are right to call him out for being doggo. To be fair, that was probably more because of Fatawu, who pinned some of their players back with his threat. Reid has so far looked like an awful purchase, even if he was free.

I was really worried in pre-season. He looked like a fish out of water and thought that letting Jacob Greaves go to Ipswich was a big mistake. But Okoli has slotted next to Faes seamlessly and is growing on me all the time. At times his passing was good today too, but an area he needs to improve in as he also gave it away a few times too. However, for 15M he looks like very good business to me. I could see him playing at Fulham or Palace, so think he looks like a decent Premier League defender at worse, but think he's got quite a high ceiling too. Quietly impressive, and he seems to have a good attitude.

20-25m seems steep, but those are the sort of prices Premier League players go for these days. I think Skipp was good today, and has looked good in almost all the games so far. He looks like he has been working down the coalmine since he was 8 years old, but he's quite mobile, good under pressure and good at carrying the ball forwards. Also decent when tackling too. Hard to believe Winks isn't the first name on the team sheet, and I think that's more down to Cooper than Winks, but in this system, I think Skipp is better than Winks, and he looked better next to Ndidi than Winks in today's game. I see Skipp being an integral part of the team for the next 3-4 seasons.

Unironically yes to this! What a sad state of affairs!

FACUNDO'S ON FIRE! YOUR DEFENCE IS TERRIFIED!

Here's the Instant Match reaction from a few of us watching the game. Great to get our first win of the season, and a clean sheet. First half was pretty decent, maybe even good. Vardy should have scored, which might have wrapped up the game. Second half, Cooper was too negative and can't react to the game state. Bournemouth took off both fullbacks and put on Alex Scott and Sinistera, going a bit more 352, but not quite. They got more possesion of the ball and forced us back as a result, and Cooper didn't do anything to fix it. He made subs too late for me, although I feel Fatawu (finally on the right hand side!) and Reid actually did well, and killed a lot of the momentum from the Cherries. Ultimately Cooper is a real coward of a manager. Look at the momentum bar below and think of how many shots we had in the second half... We gave all the impetus to Bournemouth, even though we ended the first half really well. This for me is disapointing, as a more progressive manager could have won that game with a convincing 2-0 win. At the end of the day though, it's a win, and results went for us so far, making the table look really good. Currently we are on for a 32 point season though, which is a worry as I think we will need 34 at minimum and maybe more like 38 to stay up, and that's assuming the Premier League can't find any more point deduction charges to throw at us. From what I've seen, we have the squad to be a team that could get 42-45 points, but I think the manager holds us back. But we are not in the bottom 3, and that is a good thing!

No one hates him, in fact all the fans resepect him. But the issue we have is that he should not be starting ahead of Fatawu. I think he's actually been a good pickup for the club as a squad option, and been the player I thought Bobby Reid would be. But look at that awful first touch he took when in the 90th minute against Arsenal. Posing an attacking threat ain't his game.

Who watched us play last season and came to the conclusion that dropping Vestergaard, Winks, Ricardo and Fatawu was the answer!!!?! Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Steve Cooper

This has serious "you're getting sacked in the morning" vibes to it...

The terrifiying thing is that despite playing defensively / pragmatically, it's actually making us WORSE as a team. For all of the hate that Enzo's system got from some fans last season, it was smart to practice that style ahead of the Premier League. Except in classic Leicester City fashion, we have abandoned his style that involved playing through the press and attacking with 5 when we were on transition as soon as we got there! Maresca's more aggressive press and attacking with more threats meant we pinned teams back and had a good defence because of that. Would his style work against Arsenal? No, we would probably have lost that one too, but there's a reason why he took a Chelsea team who looked all over the place during the summer and got them looking good already. His Chelsea team aren't able to control games yet, but look at their threat on transition, it's deadly. The absolutely bonkers thing here is that all Cooper had to do was... nothing. He could have kept the same style and adapted it later. Would it have been as smooth as Maresca's style, no probably not. But if he truly did watch all of the games last season, you would spot between 5-10 attacking patterns of play that we used over and over again. Very few of these remain this season, whereas if you see Chelsea play, they are making those same moves multiple times a game already. If we got to 5-10 games in and we had looked too open playing the old style and he adapted it, fans would have been onside. But he's a coward. The guy is literally sacking himself in front of our eyes. A manager that does not play Fatawu and Ricardo and plays Jordan Ayew and Viktor Kristiansen ahead of those two is as stupid as that statement sounds.