orangecity23

Fair play to Ayew, he did well to score the winner today, and by all accounts, the Palace fans think he's a great sub when you are winning, thanks to his ability to win free kicks and slow the game down when you are looking to time waste. So lets get people in their best positions, Abdul starting and Ayew on the bench, where he can come on late and wind up opposition fans.

If only we had a right winger who posed a massive threat going forward, like that Fatawu guy who came on today, but who also had great defensive stats, workrate, and puts in a real shift covering the right back - a bit like that Fatawu guy we had on loan last year. Would really balance the team out, with a player like that on the right, and a player like Mavididi on the left. Shame there isn't anyone like that in the squad, in clear sight, that the manager has completely overlooked just like he did with Mavididi a few weeks back.

I got the impression that he was Billy bullshitting to explain away the 2 minute sub appearance vs Everton, and bringing him on in stoppage time against Arsenal, what a great development experience that was. He might be ready to actually start a game next year, we'll have to drop Mavididi or Buonanotte first though, couldn't possibly have all 3 start at the same time, not when the starting game plan that puts you *checks notes* 2 goals down against the worst team in the league is working so well. EDIT - just like that crap at the start of the season where BDCR was starting instead of Mavididi, or the spell of a few games where Buonanotte didn't start. Were either of those decisions justified or tactical brilliance, or just rank stupidity leaving out some of our best players for no good reason?

So Cooper is adamant his formation and "plan" is absolutely the way to go, but this business with a winger tucking in and Justin pushing up is leading to loads of chances down our right flank. It's almost like the Cooper system is fundamentally crap and doesn't work.

Cooper came round to do some maintenance on the servers, ended up taking out the brand new ssd drives and processor, then replaced them with a 20GB 3.5" disc he found in an e-waste bin and a Pentium II, because they were "more experienced". The Pentium broke straight away, but he insisted on not substituting it until 70 minutes later.

Any stat has a margin of error on it in either direction. If it was a midtable stat and we were underperforming it a bit, or overperforming it it wouldn't be a big issue. The issue is that all of the base stats are abysmal. It means we HAVE to overperform it to deliver the heady heights of 17th, because all it will take is a little injury to Mads and a few games of Danny Ward, or a Vardy injury meaning we are relying on 3 goals a season Ayew up front and we will be right in the shit.

All this stat talk is somewhat missing the point - whether they are fully accurate or not, they are only a part of a bigger picture that says we are being outplayed for large portions of matches. You don't need a comprehensive stat analysis to tell you that we offered nothing in attack in the Spurs 1st half, the Fulham 2nd Half, the Villa 1st half, the Everton 1st half, the Arsenal 1st half, most of the Walsall game and the Bournemouth 2nd half. The stats are just another way of illustrating this - we give up a boat load of chances, and create very little. Cooper's tactics offer barely any margin for error, and where we are now in the table shouldn't be taken for granted or used as a whitewash to claim everything is fine. After the Arsenal game, a heroic performance from Hermansen to preserve our goal difference was the only thing separating us from the bottom 3, and likewise, on Saturday, it was our post and bar in the second half which prevented us from being down there still. That's how thin the margins are when you set up like this, because the "pragmatic" bit of camping in your own half only invites trouble as the opposition can commit every one forward to liberally pepper our goal at will. We actually look a lot better and defensively sound, and concede less goals when we are playing in "handbrake off" mode.

If I remember correctly - didn't Top sack Puel? I have a distinct memory that Puel was the manager at the time of the tragic accident

Yeah, it is quite galling that they didn't want leaflets handed out mentioning gambling addiction support websites, but are perfectly happy to cover the ground in endless betting commercials.

They did have some stuff about World Mental Health Day on the big screens - a logo through most of the match, and a video (mostly about avoiding burnout in the workplace) at half time.

The reason people are still banging the Cooper Out drum isn't because we want to be right - it's because all the problems that have been there since day 1 are still there, and were definitely present today as well. We are not some limited team of clogger Championship players getting results due to being in a well drilled system that gets the most of our players (for example - Chris Wilder's freshly promoted Sheff United team that finished well). This is a team with some really quite good premier league players in it, being hamstrung by tactics, formation and substitution decisions that make us look a worse team than we were last season. We still have issues with key players from last season being given the cold shoulder to disrupt the squad (add Winks to the list now, to go with all the others - Vestergaard, Ricardo, Mavididi, Fatawu). In game substitutions are still baffling. We still look statistically poorer than every opponent we've faced, and this win is built off the back of one great bit of skill by Buonanotte, coupled with some poor finishing by Bournemouth and some last ditch heroics at the back. The only credit I see Cooper really deserving today was the decision to not put Ayew on the wing, and deploy him centrally instead. Other than that, very, very little has changed, and the very obvious flaws which have persisted throughtout his entire reign here and the last 2 seasons at Forest remain glaringly obvious with no signs of learning or improvement.

Good to get a shithouse win, those 3 pts were desperately needed. This inverted Cooperball tactic of scoring first then being ultra conservative is a lot more sensible than regular flavour Cooperball where we start ultra conservative for 60-70 minutes, concede then have to desperately chase an equaliser or consolation goal at the end. Having Ayew centrally meant the team was a lot more balanced than normal, and although he didn't do anything offensively, he did bizarrely end up doing quite a lot of important defending at times. Both centre backs had great games, and Buonanotte was an absolute star, great goal, some superb covering of Justin at the back in the second half too, just all around great. Some of those subs were absolutely baffling though, all the booked players were left on (until Ayew came off eventually, then Soumare came on and immediately got booked ), no idea what the point of BdCR is when McAteer could be offering more. Maybe one glorious day we may see Stephy at LW, Buonanotte at 10 and Abdul at RW all at the same time. We all have to have dreams to keep us going.

What a dumb move by Bournemouth to win the toss and make us attack the kop first half instead of second. Confused our lads into thinking they are allowed to attack and score a goal.

Definitely agreed - the combination of Hermansen and Vardy's finishing vs Spurs and Palace, plus one snatched half chance by Stephy vs Everton (after Cooper decided early doors that he didn't even rate him and shouldn't start) are the only thing that got us the points we have. We could very easily be sat on 0 points now.

Because our DoF's idea of utilising his footballing contacts in a exhaustive search for the right candidate involves phoning the one agent he knows, getting turned down for Graham Potter again, then panicing and giving it the guy who lives round the corner from Seagrave - because he's been standing outside his office window with a sign saying "gis a job" and has agreed to go top of the training ground burglar alarm out of hours callout list and saved Jon a 30 minute drive at night sometimes if a Pigeon gets in the roof of the indoor training hall.

Even if they are concerned about Sustainability (which we all doubt given the clappers), they could have at least offered an alternative - like putting some of the details on the scoreboards at half time, or some announcements on the PA or something. Just making excuses because they don't want to say they don't care or can't be bothered.

Hmmm - seeing where we are in 4 games + a guarantee we would have been thrashed playing last seasons style. Next 4 games has Bournemouth and Southampton. Last season we beat Bournemouth in the cup with a largely reserve team playing, and thrashed Southampton twice. Lets see how this seasons "Style" of play (that gets outclassed by league 2 Walsall and has to hang on desperately for a 0-0) gets on in the equivalent fixtures. My prediction - badly.

Sounds about right, Cooper only allows us in the opposition final third once 60 minutes have gone and we are 1 or 2 goals down, so we only get near their goalline about a third of the time other teams get

That explains why Cooper didn't want him. Saw him miss one shot in training, then turned to his assistant and said "Did you see that? He just wasted almost 4 games worth of XG there!"

Training the match day teams of the future. Work experience kids on the cameras, 4ft 8, 12 year old lad in a sheepskin motty coat doing commentary.

We were 2-0 down against villa before the handbrake came off. It finished 2-1. Point being, we did nothing until Villa got their second and the game was over.

How strange. Turns out sitting there passively and letting villa have a 2-0 lead works out worse than actually trying to create all game, even if you are a newly promoted team. Don't Ipswich realise they used to be in League One?

I dunno - someone that invested in Boys II Men definitely sounds like someone who will bench Fatawu and Facundo for BDCR and Ayew.

Ask and ye shall receive. Nobody expected us to win today. Nobody expects us to win every game. Nobody expects us to win most of the games. Nobody expects us to finish in the European places. What would be a start, would be if we could win 1 game. Not aganst Arsenal, but against a team like Everton, with an injury crisis and in terrible form, at home. That would be nice. It would be nice if we could have beaten Crystal Palace once we somehow contrived to be in a 2-0 lead. But we won neither. What people might reasonably expect, if for us to have an attackinng threat when we are playing against Walsall in the Carabao cup. Walsall are a League 2 team, so compared to the likes of them, we are the Manchester City's of their world. And yet, we were comfortably outplayed and deserved to lose. Did you watch that game? In fact - how many of our games have you actually watched this season? I've watched plenty of games. So, funnily enough, I don't expect our players to be "optimal". In fact, I actually like a lot of our squad, and rate quite a few of them highly - because I've seen them play. I like Stephy Mavididi. I like Abdul Fatawu. I like Mads Hermansen. I already like Facundo Buononotte. I like Jamie Vardy. I like Ndidi, I like Winks, I'm already won over by Oliver Skipp and Okoli as well. So what I don't like, is when players like Mavididi and Fatawu, who are promising, and pacy, and carry an attacking threat are completely sidelined and treated like they don't belong at this level, to accomodate journeymen players like Ayew and BDCR, youu haven't done anything at this club to justify starting ahead of them YET. Not to say I think they should never start, but it would be reasonable to expect them to deliver a quality of performance off the bench to EARN their way into the lineup. Instead, they are parachuted straight in by a manager who has shown some very questionable judgement about the quality of his own players in every game this season. So onto the manager - now we have established that the level of expectation is to try to stay up this season - the question is do we BELIEVE that he can do it. Is their something to give us hope he can achieve that, and that he deserves our backing? Well, I may be a dumb mutt, but I'm pretty sure that our manager is currently standing on a record where he is on a run of 19 Premier League games without a win. That's half an entire season worth! In fact, his Premier League stats are currently 12 wins out of 61 games played. Now, If I apply my dumb mutt brain to that, I'm pretty sure that if we apply those stats to a Premier League game of 38 matches - that will lead to us winning 7 or 8 games all season. Which gets you 21-24 points, meaning we'd need to draw around 10-15 games to have a chance of avoiding relegation. Not an expectanation - a chance. Talking about teams to switch allegiance to, would you regard Nottingham Forest as team that have a perverse level of entitlement? They are a newly promoted team, that barely scraped survival (on the back of finishing juuuust ahead of the team with the 8th biggest wage bill in the country somehow getting themselves relegated), then last season, their expectation was to stay up. Not win the league or finish top half, just stay up, in a division containng 3 of the worst promoted teams the premier league has ever seen. That low level of expectation was not one that Steve Cooper could live up to, so they fired him and got Nuno Santo in. Who kept them up. We aren't demanding a top level manager - a Nuno Santo of our own would be adequate. Someone who could beat a 12 in 61 win record in the top flight (that's some distance worse than Frank Lampard managed at Everton for example, and nobody will give him a job at present). Someone who might win a game sometime this season, instead of continuing a half season long plus winless run. Now, I'm no tactical expert - but you may like to take a look at some of the tactical threads posted by the excellent Strider Hiryu, or check out some of his Youtube videos to get an understanding on Steve Coopers tactics (unless you've already seen us play plenty already this season) - to sum it up in a nutshell - the tactics have been bad. Really, really, really bad. So, lets end with some questions for you. Have you seen this Leicester City team play at all this season? Actually sat down and watched us play for 90 minutes? What are your level of expectations for this season? Do you expect to win any games at all this season? Would you expect us to win an away game this season? Do you rate any of our players at all? Did you see us play against Walsall? Would you expect to be able to beat a League 2 team away from home? Ultimately, the only reasonable expectation any of us should expect from Leicester City is that which we'd expect from a child on a school sports day. That they try their best. Give it the best go they can, to the best of their ability, so that at the end of the day, no matter how things turn out, they can hold their heads high and know they genuinely gave it their best go and can't have any regrets. If we go down, so be it. But if we go down, we should go down fighting. Currently, we are handicapping ourselves for more than half a game every week to put ourselves in a position where we have to scratch and claw to get anything out a match, because the manager is afraid to try. Afraid to have a go. Afraid to try to win a game, no matter what level of opponent is in front of us, even those from the bottom tier of English pro football. That's all on the manager, and unless he looks in the mirror and finds his courage, we will all be left disapointed at the end of the season, no matter what our expectations are.

We played these away from home in the cup last season, lined up with the likes of Albrighton, Praet, Coady, Yunus, Wanya, Stolarcyk and Hamza playing and won, playing front foot attacking football whenever we could. There is no excuse for cowardly, handbrake football at home in a game like this. This should be approached positively, setting our stall out to win from minute 1. No "keeping in the game" or "keeping things tight". No passive timewasting bullshit where we take no interest in doing anything with the ball for 60 minutes. I want a positive lineup, and to see us going for it properly like a team that intends to win a game of football. If Cooper wants to keep his job, the opportunity is right there. These are his 4 winnable fixtures ahead of him now, we need 5 wins and a draw more before Christmas to have a shout at staying up. There's no time to piss about hoping to win later on. Get a win on the boards now, or get out of the club and stop wasting everybody's time.