Lillehamring

Not sure what this has to do with tactics but.... Nelson, Alves, braybooke and golding have practically no first team experience - nelson is by far the most experienced with just a couple of hundred minutes in the championship. We're talking about the PL with a likely points deduction, having lost our top player and having to adjust to a new manager - these players are more likely to be loaned out than to even make the bench this season. Cooper has a lot to work out and a squad of regular first team players to get to match fitness, now is not the time to be 'bringing youth through'. The amount we've seen so far is healthy: he's having a look at the young lads, getting them involved, giving them some confidence and experience - i'm not sure what the problem is?

Bear in mind that you're commenting on a post that is screaming 'doom' based on two pre-season games. There's nothing of much substance to take away from anything yet - problem here is that fans are obsessed with this belief that everything has gone to sh!t and we're doomed to end up in administration or non-league.

I don't know how the highlights came across, but the majority of the game was basically attack (us) v defence (them), so tactically it was fairly limited (as we discovered last season) - the game plan was actually sound, the issue was really application in the final third.

I don't think it was wrong for Cooper to give Ndidi a go in that position, at this stage of the season, despite it not looking great (Certain members of the media though Ndidi was great!). I guess he went for experience over youth. But, I would have pulled him at half time, or dropped him back took off soumare and gave Alves a run, or even tried swapping ndidi and soumare. It was a bit of a strange call. If what he said means we're likely to end up with a 15/20M pound player in that spot, it's all a bit moot. I don't see him starting the season with Alves or Golding in the first XI (for the above reason, but also because it's such a huge gamble it could prove distracting) and i hope that he won't need to play Ndidi there.

I get that, but it's an adjustment that a player at this level should be able to cope with - it's not such a huge difference that it should turn a player from great to poor/mediocre. FWIW, i thought he did as much in the shrewsbury game as he did in the palermo game.

I think that's unfair - unless by 'competing' you mean a top half finish. It wasn't great in the final third today, but a couple of new players in key positions should make us competitive up to mid-table.

To be honest, other than some rather sturdy, deep lying defending, they really didn't do anything - i don't think they were a better team going forward than shrewsbury were. It feels like it was a game set up as a test to practice breaking this sort of team down - of which, as Cooper said post-game, we did half a job - we got through them, but had no end product.

The key thing from the post match interview was (again) (i paraphrase) "we're trying some things with players until we get other players in" - so we can only hope that we'll get a creative AM and ndidi can go back to the double pivot spot. Personally i'd rather have seen soumare there tonight. And you only use Daka in games where it's more open and end to end - in these games, he's useless - i think Cannon would have caused them more problems in those tight areas.

probably why he went straight into the starting line-up, eh?

2nd half Given that palermo pretty much parked the bus, this was clearly an exercise in breaking a team down and, tactically, it's safe to say it was a failure. I'm inclined to think that some of this might be due to not having the right personnel - specifically Ndidi playing so far forward - in these games you need a player in that position who can unlock a defence, Ndidi is totally not that sort of player. My deeper concern was that he gave most players 70 minutes, which would suggest this is something like his 1st XI - and i wasn't impressed with the lack of attacking substitutions, it was crying out for going daka and cannon up front and all we get is a defensive substitution, with hamza coming on. Mercifully, there won't be many games where teams park the bus against us, so hopefully we won't have to see this 'system' too often.

I can only hope he's 'trying out' a system to play in certain games - it seems very chaotic and disjointed, and again he seems to have chosen an odd line-up to play it. I definitely felt more confident playing the way we set up against shrewsbury.

He also seems to be playing up front

Palermo - 1st half. Well, i'm on board with Cooper trying a different system, but that just didn't work. Fatawu seemed completely isolated, and mavididi was having to come inside just to get close to the play. Ndidi as a #8 in the championship was ok, but the idea of him playing as a #10/second striker is absolute madness, he simply doesn't have the touch or range of passes for the position. Ricardo seemed to have been tasked as the FB who drops into a back 3, while justin did get forward but almost every time just turned back. I think most of our chances came from turning over possession, everything we tried to create just broke down with a poor pass. Positives? lots of energy, good work rate, Okoli looked much better.... But generally underwhelmed. Be interesting to see what he changes for the 2nd half.

This seems a little odd - playing that inside right position that McAteer played is basically where fatawu ended up when he was playing wide right - cutting inside onto his left foot - i can't see how it's such a different position that he would go from being great to it 'not suiting him'?

Or ignored.

Trouble is we get mainly the PL plus some of the euro tour but it's not always clear when and what's being shown.

Hmmm, sounds familiar.

I've no interest in being cynical about the club, it's never been perfectly run and never will be - i'm grateful to have had these last 10 incredible years and to be back in the PL at the first attempt. - my cynicism these days lies entirely with the dishonesty of players, and the skewed financial restrictions.

This is true - but there are people on here that are actively looking for any excuse to accuse the club of stuff - i mean, to the point of conspiracy. There's also a pervasive attitude here of entitlement of expecting things to be better/cheaper/quicker etc that are not just unreasonable, but often implausible. I love this forum, but the negativity (who'd have thought we just got promoted champions!) on here is crushing. (cue the backlash! - don't bother, i'm not biting tonight.)

I'm not saying we were massively exposed, but that when we were exposed it was predominantly out wide - magnify that by the step up in league quality and suddenly we're leaking goals. I can see why that would worry you, but i feel it's premature, we've not really seen them play inside so we can't conclude that they will be wasted and inefficient there - certainly against Shrewsbury Mavididi looked perfectly at home tucked inside - my eternal optimism feels that such a move can actually benefit them, by being less isolated and closer to the goal, it also brings them closer together allowing them to work with each other, to overlap etc. I appreciate your rhetoric, i just feel you've let it all out before we've really even got a taste of things.

Because it seems to have given certain fans another opportunity to slaughter the owners.

But, overall, it seems that the direction moving forward is positive - even for the club to admit such a thing, feels like a step in the right direction. As for the board and the charter, it surprises me not that some fans won't like it, clearly some fans won't be happy until the club is sold, for whatever reason that may be.

Fair enough, yes we have seen more of Cooper - but equally, 5 years in management is a drop in the ocean - and his current job is not directly comparable to his previous jobs, so surely some benefit of the doubt should be afforded him? As for his 'tactical decision' making, again it's been 1 game that we've been able to see, and, for me, i wasn't the least bit concerned - i see continuity from last season but with potential improvements. I get you hate WBs, but given how exposed we were last season playing three at the back, the wing back is a sensible compromise to allow some attack, but far more defensive cover.

Oh my . Potato/potato. Call it what you will, the fact is we struggled for almost a quarter of the season, largely as a result of the tactics.

Not really, assuming he starts with fatawu playing where Mcateer was playing, all he is doing is swapping maresca's #8's (kdh & ndidi) with mavididi and fatawu - meaning that our most potent attackers aren't prone to being isolated on the wings (as happened last year) - given that we don't really have any obvious natural #8's (sorry, but it's too soon to give such roles to Alves & Golding in the PL) it makes sense to have mavi and fatawu there - if anything we may see that they prove more efficient inside than out, as it allows them to attack the goal more directly and on either foot. the result is that, as we saw against shrewsbury we end up with a more centrally focussed attack, which will be great if we are playing more on the counter. We'll still have attacking width with the wing backs, but not at the expensive of leaving the flanks exposed (which was probably the biggest flaw of enzo's reign).