Tom12345

Oh dear. We are really lacking ideas. Hamza - no imagination and and Fatawu quite poor and too many errors.

I wonder if any one has done an analysis on how similar, or different, is Enzoball compared to Pep’s style? In this: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/66868576 He mentioned he cannot copy Pep because Pep is so good and a genius - suppose that means Pep is always thinking and changing - and that you need to make your own ideas. He was only there for a year as one of Pep’s assistants, so I wonder how much Enzoball is actually his own ideas and how much is copied from Pep. I hope what he says is true though. You need to have your own ideas to adapt to the type of players you have and the evolving nature of the game. Us fans talk about how we want to be patient and play a way to tire out the opponents so we can score late goals - if we can talk about it opposition team managers will one day find a way to counter that. So we always need to be ready to evolve and think one step ahead. Promising from Enzo so far.

It is impressive the level of knowledge Enzo gets into in terms of understanding the club and the players. I like what he said about Albrighton and how he paid respect to him for being one of the “glories” and being in the club for so long. He is a real manager.

I wonder what Enzo can do if we still have Maddison and Barnes. I also think there was a player in Perez who was mismanaged - and if he is still here.

I would love the club to succeed in getting something out of Everton regardless, but we have to ask how the big clubs can spend hundreds of millions each year and the PL is looking at Everton.

The season before, all 3 promoted clubs stayed up.

I have no idea how being a great team in the Championship is in conflict with us being a great PL team. If we cannot walk all over the Championship, we don’t stand a chance of being a great PL team. The way I see it so far is that Enzo is on a long term process of transforming the team. It is still early days. What will be key are: - Whether Enzo’s tactics can be adaptable enough to be successful in the PL where we won’t have the best players in the division (we just can’t compete with the riches of the top 6). He is unproven in this regard but the signs are good (early days though). If he is someone like Big Ange at Spurs, who has proven to take squads with not so good quality players into playing good attacking football successfully, then we will all be very pleased. - How the club manages the January window and the next summer when we have again so many players out of contract. - What the club can bring in in the summer with the modest budget we have (subject to FFP rules). - How Enzo and the Club can nurture the team spirit we have. In this regard, I really like how he keeps talking about Vardy and last night Albrighton as being important players with past “glories”, promoting Hamza and emphasizing he is from the academy etc.

I think it is right to have parachute money. Otherwise, relegation for any Premier League team would be so catastrophic that no one below the top 6 would spend much money because the risk becomes too great. It would mean an even less even competition. What makes English PL great is that any team on their day can beat any team. But given we were not meant to be relegated with the squad we had, it is natural that we should be better. This is not communism where we need a complete reshuffling every season. We are meant to be better and this is why we were in the Premier League and especially for us. Look at Southampton and Leeds though, they are not doing as well because they were truly deserving of their relegation. Relegation is bad enough, we shouldn’t be required to dismantle everything that made up the Leicester team - if we have to we may as well be a different club? Imagine Rodgers was appointed to the Man U role and took them down to the Championship. It would seem sensible for Man U to be able to maintain their better squad to get themselves up. Having said this, there should be more support to the rest of this league to narrow the gap with the Premier League. At the same time, there should really be some sort of cap on the top clubs because this gap and related problems will only get bigger and bigger if they are allowed to spend so so much money. How do they satisfy the FFP rules??? I mean Declan Rice is good but £100m? Just one player? That is the real problem. Yes, as we are sitting pretty this is biased, but other fans should not target us. The real problem is further up top. If their spending is much more modest, the rest would not be so far apart.

Also Kristiansen in Serie A Soumare in La Liga Perez in La Liga We had more than a decent squad. We achieved more with less in previous years. I still believe that we choked our way to two fifth place finishes when we should have finished top 3 and achieved Champions League qualifications. We credited Rodgers for the achievement, but I still believe if we had a better manager with the squad we had we could have finished top 3. We choked because Rodgers was busy doubting our players to make him look good and the negativity he instilled was so damaging and long lasting that eventually the chokes became a sleep walk towards relegation. We should never have been near relegation.

Lens won too. Mendy is a proper player. Never get why he was never valued by Rodgers or some portion of our fans.

I thought I read somewhere it is based on whether we get promoted? Basing it on games can be a tricky one. As we see with Daka, he is not playing because apparently he has reached the number of games before we need to make another payment? Ideally, we use him as well rather than let him sit on the bench (with his pace he will still be killing it in the Championship). It is a bit of a shame to see him rot there.

This is a good point. With the “tax”, we would be better off buying players while we are still fighting in the Championship. I like Yunus from the little we have seen of him so far. It was good to have him as an option to come in when Mavididi was having a bad day yesterday. In fact, I am more excited by Yunus than Mavididi - Mavididi is so far a little too self conscious but I remember Maddison being a bit like that (in a different way though) so who knows if he can add better decision making to his game he can be excellent. For me though Fatawu is an even greater prospect with his explosive pace and control.

It is probably a bit of both but in any event we are certainly improving and playing Enzoball is infinitely better than Rodgerball. I think the first half shows we are still quite a bit off to be more of the former when we face Premier League opposition. The game against Liverpool (even though both teams rotated heavily) showed that we are indeed some way off still. But as Enzo said it is a long process and we are only 10 games in. It is looking up.

To carry on the chat at the end of the game thread, with what this is showing good coaching can do with our squad, it goes to show just how bad Rodgers was. Bear in mind as well we lost a host of better quality players as well in the summer. Someone said sabotage but it was probably more just sheer incompetence plus too much self preservation. We should not have been near relegation with the squad we had. (Some people complain about parachute payments. But in our case we do have a good team and we deserve to get out of here. Look at Southampton and Leeds - they are not doing as well as we are so it is not just about parachute payments.)

This is the first time we have a proper preseason. Good to get a full year to prepare for the 2023/24 season.

Gorgeous. Albrighton can still put that early cross it. And what about that footwork and pass from Nacho, and also in getting to the end of that cross. Both should be credited with an assist! (But they won’t get it as KDH scored via a save from the keeper).

Poor refereeing with not giving us the advantage twice.

Actually they are doing pretty well. They are not really pressing. They are just keeping their shape and sitting back. They are doing it pretty easy at the moment so we should not count on them tiring. Instead, we need more variety than just going to the wide men all the time. We need to bring Nacho on for Ndidi or Justin.

As you had said, this game is more for Nacho instead of Vardy. Or perhaps we can be more brave and throw in Nacho and leave Vardy on. For me I would take off Ndidi instead of a defender. Nacho can play the role Ndidi is playing much better and he can link up better with one twos with Vardy or the wide men. We are too predictably slow at the moment with going wide. We need to do it through the middle too and Nacho is our guy. If we are to take off a defender though, I would take Justin off and move Ricardo down a bit. Justin has made a few mistakes so far and he is the most vulnerable.

Or be brave and go with two strikers: Nacho for Ndidi. Nacho tends to drop a bit deeper and can draw defenders to him while he can then make that killer pass to Vardy or to one of the wide men cutting in.

None on target. Nothing threatening so far. We need a change. Yunus for Ndidi. Ricardo needs to drop down a little. Nacho for Vardy.

We would be down already in the Prem.

No cutting edge from me. No shot on target yet. Preston on the other hand had two or three more clear cut chances. They are good.

Justin a bit shakey so far losing possession a couple of times. Faes and Coady neat and tidy. Winks fantastic. Ndidi a bit too rough with a few too many mistakes. Mavididi a bit off too. Vardy is too much out of the game so far. As a few have said, this game is more for Nacho. Preston is deceptively good.

Ipswich wins again while fellow League One promoted club Sheffield Wednesday sits bottom of the league.