JimJams

I mean that's pretty fair to say. Though saying "..the idea is to start scoring goals and stop conceding, and that will always be our idea.." That's not our idea. That's the basic premise of the sport. This "The last two games, for all of the good positions we’ve got into" also makes you wonder if he's watching the same game as us. We offered nothing. We didn't test the keeper. We didn't have any close efforts on goal. It wasn't like we were getting players in but the shot or final ball just wasn't there. We didn't do anything. Hopefully it just looks a bit shit now but all comes together.

I get that. But I'm saying that at most he has to play 1 guy out of position or play someone in there like Golding to be almost a placeholder currently. Playing players out of position is his choice. It's not being forced on him. Though tbh, he's not even playing them out of position strictly speaking but he is changing their roles within their position. None of our back line are out of position, but they're playing the roles differently. VK is still playing as a fullback. He's just playing high up the pitch. Ricardo and JJ are both playing RB, but they're not inverting. They're not out of position though technically.

That's bollocks though isn't it? We've literally lost 1 or 2 players from the first 11. Notably KDH, less notably Doyle, and I say less because he went from 1st choice to a rotation as the season went on. So if we discount Doyle and have JJ in his place as we did last season anyway, he's literally tasked with replacing KDH. So why can't we play Golding in the role of KDH? It's one change. Everyone else could play the same roles they've played last season. Everyone can continue in what's been a proven system. Why do any of them need to be played out of position? Golding would likely be a downgrade, but he is still a CM. So he's not out of position either. The players are out of position because they're playing the system Cooper wants to play. Which is fine. We're not married to play the Enzo way. But if you change the system and that means playing players out of position, that's on you. He's not having to. It's a decision. His decision. He should own that.

Match fit and match sharp are two different things. Any pro arguing that you only get fit by playing doesn't understand fitness. If I have you running up kilimanjaro all day every day for the summer, you'll be fit as a fiddle when you come to play the game. But your touch might be rusty and you might be running around like a headless chicken not knowing where to be, but you wouldn't tire! I'm not really bothered about the results of the games we play, but the system is important. So far the system in all of our friendlies seems to be to at odds with the skillsets of the players being tasked with doing whatever they're doing.

Disagree on that. If fitness is the only objective you can run fitness drills that are better than playing matches. This should be the time Cooper is assessing his tactics and getting players used to their role in the side, where opponents add dynamism. You don't need the dynamic of opposition to get fit. Minutes in legs is obviously a reason, but if it were the only reason there'd be no point in playing an actual game.

Despite the fact that we have a somewhat precarious future given our current squad situation and the upcoming points deduction, Cooper has actually landed a very lucky role with us. More often than not a new manager is walking into a job because the last gaffer was fired. You walk into a team with no identity, at a low ebb, most likely having struggled to win games. There's an onus on quickly turning things around and you have to identify a new way of playing or refreshing the squad a bit because of under-performing players. But Cooper has walked into a club where we had a way of playing that got the best out of a majority of our players. If anything needed tweaking it may have been this magical "plan B" that people often reference. But what we're seeing is a system that gets nothing out of last seasons best performers and totally negates the strengths we showed on the pitch, which would be acceptable if it highlighted strengths in other areas we were perhaps weak in last year, so although you're not trading up, you're shifting the effectiveness to a different part of the team. We have Mads, a keeper who was brought in for his excellent distribution, someone who can start moves off, who can move up the field to essentially give us an extra outfield player. Did he get the chance to do any of that today? Not really. The defence is deep and on his doorstep, if it's played back to him there's not really any time to do anything or pick anyone out. Mads, Vestegaard and Winks weren't playing together to invite the press in order to play out and create space. So although Jannik didn't do anything wrong today, like Mads, he wasn't being used in order to utilise his biggest strength as a centreback with good passing range. And with Winks, similar again, not coming short to draw midfielders out of position to open up pockets of space to exploit. Now Ricardo didn't start today but his role last season was another pivotal one, and while I'm ok with Cooper abandoning the idea of inverted fullbacks if it's not his way, ok, but then surely you should be playing them to bomb down the line and support the wingers with overlaps. But our right side is clearly not being tasked with that. That's the task for the leftback, a position weaker than the right in terms of attacking output at least, and this seems to be because Cooper wants the fullback high up the pitch, effectively becoming a winger whilst the actual winger, Mav, moves inside to support the striker. Now it seems that Cooper has identified that Mav will be better at this than Fats, and that's probably fair enough, but the fullback, VK today, is definitely not as good with their attacking impetus as we have on the right. So you're basically taking the more defensive fullbacks and giving them the more attacking role. In addition to this, whilst Mav is probably better than Fatawu at coming inside, he's coming into the space of Reid so they're getting in eachothers way or Reid was just not getting involved. But the worst of this is it also mitigates Fatawu, because VK gets high but doesn't attack the box when out of possession and Mav is coming central there is only Daka in the box to hit with a cross. If the cross misses Daka, there's nobody attacking the back post to finish things off. There's also nobody for the opposition to worry about. You're asking players to do something magical in order to make anything happen because it won't happen through patterns of play. We had a great balance in the front 3 last season, but the way we're set up now, the wings are either non existent or totally stifled. It's not looking great.

Seemingly because he wants that attacking fullback up the side of the winger he wants to play inside, and he must favour Mav doing that over Fats.

Should be 2 down. Good block in the end. Thought he'd just spooned it wide.

If we get relegated only because of the points deduction it'll be a great achievement.

Can't score, can't stop the opponents scoring. But aside from that...

Reading 10 pages of dross would have you feeling better than having watched the first half. It's all a bit uninspiring.

Coopers entire system seems to revolve around getting the ball to a winger that he doesn't want playing on the wing. We're doing none of the things that made us successful last season, but carrying on the piss poor parts that frustrated.

Like needing the entirety of the opposition to get injured in the warm up?

Look at the bright side, the points deduction will be irrelevant AND we go into the history books yet again!

Well that was a training ground set piece that looked like absolute shit

Cooper?

VK is not particularly good at getting forward, and he's also occupying space that would be better utilised having Mav in there to drive into the box. Cooper obviously wants Mav to play the Johnson role of supporting the striker but he's not getting any joy, he's in the area Reid should be in. Everyone seems to just shift into someone else's spot to allow someone else who's not as good to occupy the space they should be in themselves.

In a nutshell...

It's a very good header tbf. Difficult to score from there moving away from goal.

Fantastic.

Faes sold himself there. Still in character!

Their number 3 has gone in on both Vik and Mav now. Might get spicy with it not being 2 minutes in.

It's there. The stream hasn't started yet though.

The redemption arc starts now!

Why? After watching the friendlies so far I'm with you on being baffled. However if his plan with a 4231 is to have a deep defence, the mid 2 sitting deep and the front 4 all pacey for the break, given this season everyone will play to beat us not sit back, then Mav, Fats, Daka/Vards and the possible inclusion of Asprilla or currently DCR operating through the middle could get a lot of joy playing counter attacking football.