Sooper Steve's shin

Surprised about Maswanhise, thought he was a good prospect coming through.

Still don’t think he gets enough credit for his management and tactics. Yes, we came out of the Great Escape season and from the outside you might assume that we carried momentum from there, but there were actually quite a lot of changes. Pearson finished up the season with three centre-halves (Morgan, Huth and Wasilewski), Ranieri took us back to four at the back. We lost our player of the season in Cambiasso and second top scorer David Nugent. He swapped the attacking focus from our 2014/15 top scorer Ulloa to Jamie Vardy and played Okazaki in behind. At the time, it was fairly bold to drop Ulloa to an impact sub role. In the early part of the season, he changed both full backs, introduced Kante (initially coming on as a sub on the wing!) and relied much more on Albrighton (who’d only played 20 games the previous season). James and King had the most appearances of our midfielders in 14/15 after Cambiasso, but Ranieri developed the Drinkwater-Kante combination. One thing I remember about the early weeks is that we suddenly seemed much better at seeing out games to the end. I recall Pearson’s time as quite chaotic and nervy at the end of games, but Ranieri instilled something that made us much less nervous. We had the run of (very Italian) 1-0 games at one point in the middle of the season that he managed to perfection. I don’t think the 40 point target started off as a particular tactic, it was a fairly legitimate target for a team that had just come mighty close to relegation. As our good start developed into a great one, it became a bit more of a focal point for relieving pressure - of course we weren’t thinking about the title or Europe after two or three months - but Claudio started to say it with a little glint in his eye as he began to think we might be well capable of surpassing it. We had everything go for us that season - the spirit, the amount of players peaking at the same time, nobody else really taking the fight to us etc. But there was a special touch from Claudio as he used his experience and tactical knowledge in exactly the right way.

If he shaves his head, he’s got the Pep/Enzo look that we need.

Outstanding work.

Vestergaard being good.

He can be next season’s Connor Coady. Coady can be Vardy’s second season. Souttar to be next season’s Vestergaard.

Personally, I think he is criminally overrated - often makes sloppy mistakes, gets caught out of position and a shaky defender at best. That run was typical too (where would he have been if it had bounced to a defender and they broke away?).

Most graphic description of a roller coaster ride I’ve ever heard!!!

Funny how every opposition team we’ve beaten and a good number of pundits (particularly at the start of the season) bleated on that we were a Premier League side - yet most on here saying we need a complete overhaul. I think the truth is somewhere in between - I never bought the idea that we were a PL side playing in the Championship. People forget we lost Maddison, Barnes, Tielemans, Castagne, Evans etc over the summer. We didn’t replace them with any proven PL quality bar Winks and Coady (although the latter made no real impact on the pitch). We brought in the likes of Hermansen, Mavididi and Fatawu who look like PL players but have never been. And we revitalised some who had been discarded like Vestergaard and Choudhiry, as well as playing some in new positions (Ndidi and Ricardo). All of that happened with Maresca coming in fairly late in the summer, so I think we’ll be fine to do what needs to be done over the next three or four months.

Not really - a Coady or a Nelson would do. I’d have happily taken Ndidi or Justin in his position based on the run of performances prior to Norwich. People don’t want perfection, just someone slightly more solid and sensible in an important position.

Good point made on the last pod (I think it was Harry) about experience and Pearson’s use of Hammond and GTF. I would add the likes of Cambiasso, Huth and Wasilewski as signings that NP made to add a bit of experience and nous to our squad at the right times. There was an interview with one of his analysts who talked about that being part of the qualities they wanted for certain signings. I guess it’s easy to be seduced by the young exciting player with a high ceiling, which was generally the Rodgers way (Maddison, Tielemans, Fofana etc). But he never balanced that with older heads. And it needs to be older heads who can dig in. Even a Schmeichel in goal gives us something else in these tight games, no matter how good Hermansen is. I think at the moment we have Coady who could come in and naturally fill that role. Our other seasoned leader is Vardy, but he’s out for a few weeks now. The remaining older players are generally quieter types - Ricardo, Albrighton, Vestergaard, - which is fine but we need more steel. Hopefully we get it done this season, but I’d like to see us bringing in one or two of this sort of player in the summer to help some of these issues.

There’s a very good episode of the Quickly Kevin 90’s football podcast with Brian Little where he talks a lot about his time with us and mentions this game. We’d lost two play-off finals on the bounce (Blackburn and Swindon), so this was one he had to win by any means. Derby were a decent footballing side and we had a few injuries, so he played to the strengths we had - height and physicality. Walsh, Ormondroyd and Roberts as a front three. It was definitely the worst footballing side we had for any of those finals but it worked. Glorious day.

Of course it is! My bad.

Got to be Leicester 5 Cambridge 0 Can we also add Nuge chasing a squirrel?

The point is that we play a system that doesn’t require a traditional left back. The left-sided defender in our system is better suited to being a mobile central defender than a traditional left-back like Kristiansen or Thomas. To be honest, I don’t think there is any reason why the fullback who steps up into CM could not come from the left (with the right sided defender then being a mobile, right footed CB) but it needs a certain type of intelligent and technical player. Ricardo fits it perfectly, Enzo has only trusted Hamza as the alternative in that role (probably because he is traditionally more of a midfielder).