Tom12345

I have a sense Faes is a bad apple in the dressing room. He moans too much and keeps blaming others on the pitch when he makes mistakes. Like last week when he blamed Mads for his ridiculous back heel. Happens every single time. Winks is a team player. He keeps emphasizing how we have a good dressing room etc. He must hate what Faes is doing in this regard.

No thank you. He is such a handicap to the team if he plays next to Winks. It makes Winks and others around him struggle as well. Teammates are supposed to make you better. If we move him away from the AM role, it has to be to the bench.

For the reasons set out in quite a few Ndidi related posts now, Ndidi should not be any understudy for Winks now. This is worst. Strider also made some really good videos showing why. Playing in such role will kill our game as that role in the modern game requires a really good ball handler who can connect defence with midfield and who can help teammates with options when we have possession. The cost is far too great - we won’t able to have much fluency in our transition and would find it hard to get up the pitch. In effect, the cost is that we will lack much creativity in our plays. See the few seasons before we got relegated as an example. Ndidi’s best role now is actually up top if Cooper wants to press high to help steal the ball back higher up the pitch and then hope one of his better ball handling attacking teammates there can take advantage. Lower down the pitch - we have defenders there and they are far from the opposition goal. But I would be happy to see our new no. 11 starts there instead.

I hope gradually this will become Cooper’s first team: GK: Mads Defenders: (Right to Left) Ricardo/Justin Okoli Coady/Faes Justin/Kristiansen Defensive pivots: Winks Skipp Attacking Midfield: Buonanotte/Fatawu El Khannouss/Buonanotte/Ndidi Mavididi/Ayew Forward: Vardy Notes re Ricardo: If Fatawu plays on the right, Ricardo can draft inside often. If Buonanotte plays on the right, Ricardo can stay out wide more as a winger. Either way, Ricardo should start what Justin or Kristiansen playing on the left.

I don’t want to go to this extreme in terms of Cooper, but it is not only disappointing but worrying that Cooper fails to see Ricardo’s qualities especially as a RB (which is a position that prior to being used as an inverted RB Ricardo is clearly one of the best in the league). However with the way Cooper selects him team, and with new players just joined, it is hard to see him start for a while. But what I don’t understand is, as you say, when Fatawu came off on the right and we needed more creativity, we should have Ricardo on for Justin who was not doing anything attacking wise. Justin at best got to about a third into the half without contribution or losing the ball. If we had Ricardo on, he could have made his trademark runs and link up with Buonanotte who clearly is not much of a winger. Buonanotte kept coming inside (he was playing more as an attacking midfielder last week), and we would have benefited with Ricardo bombing down the right. But he kept Justin on. Alternatively he could have replaced Kristiansen and Justin to go to the left (a position where Justin can play as well). Kristiansen played ok, and I don’t want to criticise him, but apart from having a bag of air to run up and down all game, he didn’t really offer much in terms of creativity. So in short, in terms of creativity, Ricardo is clearly the best out of the three. Defensively, Ricardo is good too (admittedly he used to be fantastic and indestructible but following his injury I feel he has taken a step back from hurting himself as much).

And also Khannouss. The three of them added quite a bit of mobility and speed.

At least Cooper is better than Rodgers. He didn’t keep Ndidi in DCM for long. Rodgers would have kept Ndidi in his problematic DCM position and ended up the game with 6 defenders chasing the game by passing about at the back. Having said that, I still don’t know what Cooper’s style is.

To be honest, I am more forgiving towards Cooper. If it was Rodgers, we should still have 6 defenders on the pitch at the end. Cooper didn’t, so that is a tick for me. He started Ndidi at AM which means he sees a bit what we see, so I am pleased. However, he changed him back to DCM after Skipp left, so that is still worrying. When Khannouss and Buonanotte came on, they instantly gave our midfield so much more mobility. The fact Cooper didn’t that was encouraging. Yet, he still have Ricardo on the bench so that is worrying in terms of what he sees. He has to start either in place of Justin or Kristiansen. Not starting Mavididi is also strange. He changed the game. But in fairness, Ayew was not too bad at all today. There is some issue though still with our game plan. We didn’t provide much to Vardy until the 3 subs came on. Overall, this second half is encouraging. It is only 3 games. Let’s observe more first. Give the team a proper chance to gel.

To be honest, I am slightly more forgiving towards Cooper. If it was Rodgers, we would still have 6 defenders at the end chasing the game.

Disappointed with the loss. A draw would have been fair in the end. Villa started well and they deserved to go in front, but we deserved something in the end. But good signs in the end. Our new 11 looks good. Mav was great. Buonanotte was good but then had a few crazy shots. Ok. Let’s get behind the team and hope they get better.

Really, Villa had one chance in the second chance and they scored.

Good effort in the end. Just not enough. If only we started better.

Got to get Ricardo on for Justin now. Go more attacking mode. Ricardo can roam forward more

I like our new no 11 already. Quick and energetic

I don’t mind him playing AM but when he is around he is in danger of playing DCM. Vardy not happy with Ndidi’s pass there.

Mavididi firing

Wow. Should have kept Skipp on instead of Ndidi. Ndidi is now playing the Skipp role. Winks and Skipp kept the ball going up the pitch. Not sure about Winks and Ndidi.

I thought that was Ayew’s job, but he has drilled too often to the left because Kristiansen has been quite ineffective there.

That’s what I mean. Kristiansen does not deserve a place in the first team when we have Ricardo sitting on the bench. Move Justin. Also, Kristiansen is pretty ordinary.

And a couple of brain freezes for Faes.

Justin played there before and can play there while Ricardo goes to the right. Ricardo played there before joining us.

He did before he joined us. Also, Justin can play there and Ricardo take the RB role - ie a swap

How is Kristiansen ahead of Ricardo …?

Wow. Villa is really running rings around us.

Having a blamer in the team is never good for morale too.