Alan Frost

Even I can't remember that and suspect you can't, but I do remember 1963 . For the first time in my life I lived in a city with a top league club, Leicester. Finally 4th I think and maybe favorites in the cup final. Its worth reminding oneself this season isn't a season yet , technically its a part season ( but still keeping many happy at the moment , bless them, One does hope they realise its all temporary glory right up to reckoning day ). None the less its been wonderful so far, and looks like further improving. I'm feeling very good through Covid as a result and I think and hope its going to get even better on both fronts. I think that's unarguably a reasonable perspective and respects reality. I think in 63 we were top with 5 games to go but 4th this season I would rate a much bigger achievement .

As usual you talk much sense. I'll have another look at that. I missed it but did think it was a penalty. As I've recently posted we cheat a bit less than most but we do cheat a bit sometimes. I'm going to excuse Vardy . I think since joining LCFC , meeting Vichai and BR, Claudio and others he's become one of the good guys, very much so by football standards.He's also older of course which helps as you and I would agree. I am prepared to believe he's currently well aware he's not contributing as much ,or even much and felt an irresistible urge to contribute a goal. I'm glad it did n't work. He'd have undoubtedly have taken it and probably would have been tempted into hitting it at near supersonic speed . I don't think that .while understandable would have been wise for him at the moment. I think we have many admirable and good guy players , not just JV but most of them and I'm relying on BR to get a bit uglier and put a little , not much , devilment into several of them . Barnes is OK, and Choudbury thay at least eventually get angry. OK if they control it. Under's far too nice . If Roy Keane had been treated the same we'd be looking for a new manager. I don't think Keane would have killed him but he'd have been severely disabled, probably "accidentally" in training but Keane would have let him know why the "accident" regrettably happened. As you probably know Keane had a very long memory and was happy to wait for years. To Keane's credit imo he never claimed to be anything else.. and when he deserved punching to the ground , as Clough famously did, the incident was immediately forgotten. All Keane had done was give an important goal away with a loose pass . Unforgiveable to both of them.Its all in print ,written up by RK.and verified, but maybe a little exaggerated altho Clough certainly put him down..

Instant reaction , Well done team and Brendan but Jesus don't put me through that again. Thank God the HT talk seemed better than the prematch send out and the subs although still a bit late for me were OK. Thank you Mr Flair Ric Flair and bless you , your boy did n't disgrace himself and for a debut he did well. I'm only sorry BR did n't use the opportunity to grow some bigger ones and rest JV., we would n't have struggled so much. Love JV and he,ll always volunteer if he feels he can help the team. I don't think he can at the moment but after all he's done I can't really blame him ,or BR for feeling he's indispensable . He' s not and no one ever will be but he will come close again and the longer he is the more blessed we'll be. He's not even scaring the opposition at the moment as the match proceeds. Brighton certainly are n't gash as some claimed unless you think we are as well . Fan hubris , a deadly rot.if it spreads.The team you play in the NM are never Gash. and its always the most important match. BR, like Pep , should n't be looking for good, we need him looking for perfection. You can't by definition ever get that against gash. Thank god we have a week for training in some of the basics ,Not diamonds , triangles, shape and other bullshit. Just basics , set pieces,accurate passing ,pressing. defending with less players. That definitely improved 2nd half,8 dropped to 6 and we looked better for it .JV sadly, for now is not even pressing well and iheanacho is the obvious man to take up the slack. He's much better but I saw him shirk at least 2 opportunites after he'd scored, probably no coincidence. Castagne, Ndidi, Tielemans , obviouly Vardy, Soyuncu all below par first half, but I did manage to preserve a couple of fingernails second half.. One thing I did notice today. its good to press in packs but once you've caught one agree who.s going to bite their leg. One biter with two or one standing another yard and a half further away to step in two paces before he/they bite , while the other two/one recover and resharpen their teeth. You're all getting in each others way, like defending with ten or 8 men at a set piece. Looks ugly and is wasteful and believe it or not less effective. Player ratings tomorrow there 's a few bits in that first half I need to look at again.

No, prefer Ndidi and Tielemans together in mid field, although I can see good reasons to want him forward a bit, and Nacho, who I was n't keen on at one time , round about Palace away, instead of JV, altho it hurts typing it. Purely in JV's interests-I'm guessing. Prefer the taller Dan to Mendy too although I like Mendy's fight compared with Dan's lovely laid back approach. he's always smiling even in those tense minutes just before KO.

Funnily enough although we are different from them ( we don't have red neighbours unless you count Forest),and my liking for Chelsea, I've always thought of LCFC as most like Man C. The shared div 2 Champs record,,(up and down a lot div 1 and 2), Revie before he got a bit disgraced, Blues, and now it turns out Sheik Mansour is a public benefactor as Vichai was. Usually I'm not overkeen on the Arabs but I once had a lot of Iranian/Persian friends and know there are some magnificent Arab guys. Also of course I'm a Pep admirer and hope BR ends up similar (he needs to change a bit )but they are at least are both good guys AFA I'm concerned. I Wonder if Mansour is Iranian ,the Persians had most of the Arabs I like. I don't dislike our red neighbours, I lived in Nottm. three years and married a Nottm . girl ( does n't every one who lives there a bit) and I loved Cloughie/Taylor altho I did n't live there then. I also liked County (still do) and hope they get off their knees again. My Chelsea liking is from living in London when Dave Sexton ran Chelsea (Osgood, Hudson, Holiins , Cooke etc,) and the only real alternative was the boring Arsenal double team ( altho former LCFC boy Mclintock was OK ) He was a player then not a manager..

Thanks pal, I remember the many positive comments post match from Man C fans even when we beat you back in 2016 . As I.ve recently posted ,if we can't win the title which we can't this year then Man City are the best other option. Funnily enough it was another blue bunch ,Chelsea who did us a small favour against Spurs in 2016. Not sure I feel the same about Everton these days although personally I prefer them to L'pool. Kloppy's a bit of a whinger but i think he's a good guy.The older lot of scouse fans always had a lot of humour and could take a joke , whether L'pool or Everton . I think my post got "strangled" but I can quote the end roughly " fortunately I think Man City are the best of the other clubs but they are monied and entitled ." I try to tell it as I see it so i get some posts strangled, and think my respect for Man C came from the Nijinsky, Summerbee, Francis Lee days (was n't he a bit fiery seem to remember he had an on field scrap with someone ,Bremner was it ?) . if it was, another plus point ,even though Bremner comes from just down the road from where I live now in Scotland., He was a great player though. As a 12 year old I had a poster up of the Revie "W" plan team which reached the cup final but i think lost. Finally more up to date , i'm a great admirer of Pep ,imo the smartest manager in the PL and all round good guy.with the right principles . Maybe we're a bit pushed and small compared with you guys but I'll certainly be wishing you luck against the boys from the other, red end of town. definitely not my favourites. altho I don't hate them , any club that had Bestie, Cantona, Busby .Paddy Crerand, Denis Law and Frank O'Farrell, can't have gone totally to the dogs. Did n't Bestie have Chelsea ( Hudson for one) and some Man C, mates ?

and me , its almost exactly my estimate of the points we would. have had from set pieces.

If I could open a thread I'd call this " A word of cheer for LCFC." I think its very important that LCFC have a top 4 finish, not just for LCFC but also for football. Basically because we might just be the future in our small way for football. We're entering the home straight of this season. Maybe I'm biased but in my opinion in the world of PL football we of all the 20 clubs maybe more than any other are probably the most worthy champions, let alone top 4. Why ,well all PL clubs cheat, whether it's minor like taking the ball to the corner flag in the dying minutes of a game or very serious such as breaking UEFAs or the PL financial rules to gain an advantage. It seems to me being as objective as I can be that we cheat less than most,maybe all. We don't do a lot of diving, we don't feign injury, and we don't make excuses. Well we do but noticeably less than the others and certainly less than the big six. I also believe we have the right philosophy for upholding the sporting values of football. Even in professional golf which at one time was among the highest rewarded of sports (not that long ago , I remember it).the days when Jack Nicholas could forbear making Tom Watson play a missable putt to halve the score in the Open ,after 4 rounds of fierce competition are long gone. Nicklaus of course did it graciously " I know you would n't have missed it" . We'll never know. So I think a win for LCFC is important ,mostly to us, but provided we continue to uphold some sort of standards, to all the smaller , less rich clubs , right the way down to football's basement. We're not going to win the PL this year but if we can get a top 4 finish we might win it next year and maybe even the CL within 10 years. That would take a miracle but its not impossible. Fortunately imo a £100m footballer is usually only worth say £50m, a £200m footballer say £70m, a £400m footballer maybe £100m ,a law of decreasing returns . And all of them might not be worth as much as three Championship footballers in a team that really , really want to get through to the next round even where deep down they know they will then probably lose. Just prompted by watching Fulham v Spurs, and thinking "there ain't no justice". Well we all know that if we're old enough to have read Catch 22 which has a long , very funny , passage on Justice starting "Justice is a knife in the back , down a dark alley, between the legs with a boot, by VAR......." or words to that effect. (I made the VAR bit up). Also stuff Football Statistics , I still think we've had the worst injury luck of all. I warned in another post (strangled ) about applying statistics to Human affairs,such as football. I think I could have called it "Why I think BR is a Good Fit for LCFC". Luckily I think Man C might be among the best of the rest but they're monied and a bit entitled.

Pretty smart attitude when basically you're running an establishment for talented overpaid young sports stars who are often far from home or country. Much as I loved Bestie, he was probably unfortunate he was there before Ferguson, although he would have been a test ! A very bright guy imo. Best would have said fortunate of course. I mean bright academically , like many of us he wilfully ignored common sense. I suspect although I'm not such a big fan of Ferguson (except at Aberdeen where he proved his credentials as a great manager as far as I'm concerned) that he had what I call "benevolent ruthlessness" which is often kinder to all concerned. Even if it temporarily makes one unpopular. I'm not sure BR has developed enough ot that yet and I'll admit i had to work on it even in my much smaller pond.

I used to be prematurely critical of iheanacho. We're getting more and more blue moons. His recent headed goal (v brighton ? ) was also taken with a lot of skill. I always think when commentators are drooling over players in fashion "Yeah, I wonder if he tried that 10 times how many times could he pull it off " In Messi's case i reckon the answer would usually be 9 or 10 but I don't think many others would be that good. Practice of course puts the number up. We all know what Gary Player said so wisely about it. There is luck involved but the more you work and practice , the less luck is involved. part of football's beauty is luck is never totally absent.

I'm so glad someone , probably BR, insists that all players are "enforced" to take turns in giving after match interviews. I suspect not all our players are glad of this especially if English is not their native tongue or they are more reserved or less confident at giving interviews. I found iheanacho's charming if at my age I can get away with risking appearing patronising. I'm not being so. I hope. If it is due to BR I feel its very very much to his credit he understands player development as meaning more than just on the football pitch and I hope they all come to appreciate it in time.

Not only that, I would like him to eventually become our player/assistant manager, hopefully if they continued to be here under Brendan Rogers. My optimistic guess is both would see the mutual benefit of this . Followed by Kasper eventually becoming our manager. I base this on the slim evidence of Kasper's recent interview posted on the site. Interviews , I was quite impressed with Luke Thomas's interview after Burnley altho Luke unfortunately did n't have such a competent interviewer as Kasper's two interviwers. Justin and Barnes also come across to me very well. Players attitudes I think tell as much about a player as their playing performance, one of the reasons I have the cheek to post on a football forum. A PS I was n't so keen on Kasper's dad. , but I was "young and foolish" then, Some would say I 'm younger and stupid now.

That appeared true from the chart Stuhill posted. BR, and the players have however done an excellent job. BR as he should be has been the most important factor, As Pep continually points out the search is not for excellence, it is for perfection. Perfection means total honesty in my book at least with oneself and I prefer it demonstrated publicly and its missing in two areas imo. Firstly I feel the Vardy fitness situation has an unknown factor which is doing Vardy's eventual legacy no good. Secondly if the Ünder situation is as many suspect I would prefer an honest statement which repects the player and the manager. Some would argue its wiser to keep some things opaque, an opinion I respect although imo its always a mistake. Fortunately its only football. were it Politics or Justice it could be more than a mistake, it would be criminal.

I would like that very much too, but Man City are a huge obstacle. However its not impossible. Although they beat Wolves 4-1 they had to bring on subs ( they can always bring on very effective ones) and work very hard to do so imo. This is football and results can never be predicted, desire to win, good tactics and luck will always be factors. The surprise for me was i was getting bored with Man C's superiority (Rumblefox went to sleep !) and then for 15-20 minutes Wolves ,who presumably had never practiced it almost equalled Man C playing much the same style. Rumblefox missed a treat ! Eventually Man Cs stronger subs. practice and more expensive players told and they scored again , heads dropped and Wolves conceded another 2. Also while my heart would love a cup final and win ; my head says a top 4 finish should leave us with a better chance in 2021/2 season both of winning the FA cup and continuing CL football. This is a big ask but imo possible and I'd be sleeping easier if we manage the rest of the month with maximum points. That will keep things in our hands. Iheanacho I always feel could give more effort, he's much improved and his Burnley goal was brilliant . No player can be guaranteed to score goals as diifficult as that 10 times out of 10. That's the luck factor. BR will have done brilliantly if his selections and tactics pull off the FA cup and top 4 and imo will need some luck on top of that. Unfortunately one can't earn luck but that does n't stop me feeling he has earned some. I think had Barnes self inflicted injury (a result of his will to win ,so no blame involved) and Justin's injury, not happened: this very big ask would have been say 60% smaller.

I thought Ayoze had become a defensive winger a few threads back.

That looked to me well rehearsed, although I don't think Luiz was meant to have to stoop so much for the ball in which case it would have looked more like a bog standard goal from a corner. As we don't appear to have practised even standard corners and such is the evidence; a goal like this would probably mean Soyuncu was remembering his days as a striker. Lets hope so , this type of goal occurs fairly often from a corner and needs little effort from the team, and carries little risk of injury. It just looks all so simple, except against man for man marking which I believe Burnley do.

Some appear to think the Nacho/Vardy front pairing has worked. I can't replay those matches totally in my head so would not comment. I do suspect that JV had to have obviously an operation as soon as was possible for a hernia but also had a groin or hip problem at the same time which had been and still is ongoing. He might be playing on voluntarily with it which if I'm correct i do not think is wise either medically or for the longer term. If correct it is commendable as he is risking to some extent his legendary status. Mind you I'm sure we'll all stay well aware of how much his loyalty and performances have done for the club.Certainly more than any other player I've seen. Ricardo will probably improve with every match until he's back to his usual standard, he's close now and I suppose BR knows enough,he should do ,to play him in the best position for the team against Burnley which I suspect is as you suggest. I do think he looks effective in midfield and useful as an attacker, but best coming forward as you say from further back.

Sorry ,should have read "win the PL again"

I suspect that you already know it won't be anywhere as bad as that. In a couple of weeks hopefully our above average amount of injuries will gradually decrease and the team will again be stronger, and our results will improve. Unfortunately players who are going to be unavailable for several/many weeks own a lot of the "backbone" and character necessary to a successful football team. Players such as Justin, Fofana, Evans, Fuchs, Morgan,Kasper, Vardy,Maddison, Barnes, Tielemans.Ndidi, Soyuncu,Thomas and most of the others will hopefully be available next season plus maybe a new signing or two when we'll be luckier and even more formidable, Fuchs and Morgan may do less playing ,or maybe none but I hope they are around in some role as they also own a lot of our spirit and character. I am beginning to believe that although we also need BR imo he has to learn most and quickly. I'll be labelled as a fool but I honestly believe we could have finished second this year, despite everything . We just never did what the best manager in the PL , Pep Imo ,tells us is necessary. Its no secret and you don't need to know a lot about football to apply it. Most good managers know it and I only quote Pep's name because he 's a football manager who is repected in that field. Meanwhile. like Covid, things are about to slowly improve, Maybe we need a bit of help from Top's Buddhist monks to get our mojo back. I'm serious , believe it or not, Pep's no fool.

Its worse than that, the fact we all defend means the opposition can also pack the box. This is likely to lead to spells of pinball in the area we least want it , our penalty box. Its amazing that our entire presumably expert and highly paid, tacticians and coaches can not pick up issues which are obvious to even me just using common sense. Obviously people who understand football of which we seem to have several on the forum can probably see even more obvious weaknesses. What is even more amazing is that when these are pointed out probably a majority of the forum argue against them consistently even when presented with facts I would expect school football coaches to know intuitively,not a big exaggeration. If you wish for more than amazement, such as being cornswoggled, we, LCFC a team I would love to see win the PL are currently 3rd in the PL despite relative poverty in players and money, and an injury list as long as your arm. You explain it I can't although I have a few theories I won't bore you with now but briefly tonight's Man C v Wolves (4-1) gave a perfect example of part of the explanation , in its various phases. A clue would be don't be fooled by the score. Also I think most of our players and BR genuinely respect and care for the club to varying degrees.

Looking at a few of Burnley's goals it is wise to be able to defend against high balls from corners ,crosses, and and set pieces but importantly my advice would be to assume they are well capable of scoring goals from open play. I would n't arrogantly assume that long high balls are their only route to scoring goals. I imagine they practice all ways to score. I hope we have done the same but all the indications are we have concentrated only on goals from open play. This in itself means we have practised preventing goals from open play,which is good. As we need 3 points from this match I hope we have also practised defending and attacking high balls. These are part of football so i hope that we have also practised these ,it would seem incredibly remiss not to have done although many on the forum including me have seen little evidence of this which may have cost us 2 to 5 points this year already depending on how hard and cleverly the team practiced.

Yes........go on. I'll give you a start.............time for us to do it. By...............

I have some doubts too ,I think we may already have blown it, and Ünder will be very mature for his age if we have n't. Either we made a bad mistake at his "interview" or we've made a bad mistake since . It has to be one or the other. When I employed someone who did n't work out (only happened once) I was never in any doubt where the blame lay. Luckily we relied on 3 interviews mine initially, then one by my boss, then one by Personnel dept. I carried the can for failure so I had the final veto . If I had n't they'd obviously have been looking for two people. I spent a lot of time on recruitment when I needed someone. At least I was smart enough to realise I'd get that time back with interest , in money, time , and results. Football (not necessarily LCFC) is still pretty primitive compared with other fields of activity, its methods are imo stone age and needlessly very very expensive in money and people.

Set pieces ,heading, Ünder. all useful potentially against Burnley. Proposed by many ,opposed by many. What a pity the proposers were ignored . Look at Arsenals simple Luiz goal. I suspect it did n't go entirely to plan. We were probably lucky they did n't try it again , a slight improvement and we'd have probably lost 4-1.

Length warning- -I'm trying to sum up just my dumb opinions of 5 seasons ,culminating in "respect for BR." I do get through the first 3 seasons at rocket pace (for me) . I can only give my opinion based on seeing 90 minutes of matches only since end of December when I realised fully for the first time that even seeing 45 minute highlights is insufficient data to attempt to give an accurate opinion and even then much information is still missing. Bearing that in mind my impressions of LCFC starting from 2015/6 are briefly :- . 2015/6 . Almost literally miraculous, as was the earlier great escape. i had no idea of the reasons or personalities reponsible but gave Claudio and Vichai most of the credit along with the players. I now know of course Nigel Pearson deserved a lot of the credit. Whether he could have achieved the same I doubt ,although I don't doubt he'd have done very well. Anyway it made my year. 2016/19 I think for most of this time I was happy with how LCFC were progressing although there was little obvious progress from the 2016 high, although we did very well in Europe in 2016-7 imo. Difficult to show progress after winning the PL There were some brief periods when we seemed to be going backwards but its a very competitive field and I did n't expect miracles. Continuous upward progress has happened in English and Scottish football over several seasons but is rare and would usually indicate I suspect an inrush of large sums of money (Gretna), Chelsea) or a "genius " in football management ( Clough/Taylor, JIm Mclean, Alex Ferguson at Aberdeen). Usually i think of these managers as Great managers. Then there are good managers , also there are also rans. At an instant guess these 3 arbitary divisions divide into say 1%, 10%. 78% respectively of all football managers. The other 11% you can assume "died in action." in a manner of speaking.(retd, died ,sacked) 2019-20 BR arrived. I was delighted, thought we had done very well to get him and progress overall showed a pretty continuous upward trend with a falling away at the end of the season. Generally our results were worse than the effect on league position after N/Year. I had little idea of the facts and reasons for this and generally thought that achieving 5th in the league was a very good performance although mainly due to the period up to NY. After Vichai died I was tremendously impressed with the dignity and resilience of the club, found out that Vichai was even more impressive as a man, than I knew previously., and hoped that with Top taking over from his father we would continue to make progress under BR as manager. That has largely happened, and delighted me, not that I have any special importance , I'm just a very long term fan. (early 1963). 2020-21 upward progess continued. I regarded BR as a very very good manager and hoped he might become our long overdue Great manager. I used the forum much more and learned a lot about LCFC (thank you).and the players. i was very impressed with the strengthening of our team and squad and for shorthand gave most of the credit to BR which I suppose is largely true. I mistakenly thought that our squad was sufficient to maybe win the PL again, a feat probably as difficult as 2016. Generally i thought most of the credit was due to Top, BR and the squad. I still do. Apologies for the length but I have covered briefly my impressions of 5 seasons. To sum up I think LCFC was lucky to get such good owners, lucky to get our excellent squad so economically and lucky to get BR. Everyone got lucky. Our failure to maintain continuous improvement I put down almost entirely to covid and an unfortunate run of injuries. Despite these throughout January I thought our squad was big enough and good enough to may be even win the PL and maybe another trophy. I was wrong. The injuries have meant this is probably no longer possible and imo a top 4 finish alone will be a major achievement for the club and BR, and would certainly re kindle my hopes he might eventually bacome our Great manager. Maybe even that's not necessary, its probably harder to become a Great manager these days. I think its great we have a long term target for the future, which i suspect is not true for most clubs, (except Man U., I understand they have a long term plan to become Masters of the Universe-only joking--obviously Olly would be gone by now if it were true) . The Slavia and Arsenal matches and tactics ,and resultant disappointment definitely meant I have lowered ,maybe unfairly, my initial and long held faith in BR a little,but only a little. On the whole Covid has meant I intend to suspend my opinion which is only of any value to me until say the 2021-22 season ,maybe longer. That does not mean i will suspend all interim criticisms of players or BR . They are almost all starting from a very high rating with yours truly. All constructive criticism and corrections welcome, not that anyone needs a bloody invitation.