Lillehamring

Ironic that, like most games this season, our possession game sets us up to win games late?

Doesn't help when nacho manages just 23 touches and i'm guessing a good number of those were when he's dropping deep.

You do understand that after teams score the opponent usually step it up? Especially a form team, in front of their home fans.

It's not - but we're not the finished article - we have loads of room for improvement. And, to be fair, it was a really scrappy game generally.

7 points from 9 - title form, that.

That felt good. That felt føkking good! That has to be one of the most satisfying wins of the season - to go to one of the division's form teams, on their own patch where they'd only lost 1 in 10, out of a very frustrating run of games - effectively we were the underdogs going into that - to almost blow it but then to show we have the quality and the drive to go on and win. and what a goal! And to see the city fans (best we've come across this season for me) singing 'Leicester' to KDH - chills. I know this is quite the overreaction, but it's been such a drag with all the negativity on here this last week, it was just great to get back to what we do so well. couple of sloppy passes aside, we made them look bang average - if only we were better in the final third!

If that's true about mcateer then it's also true about fatawu - other than his last goal he has been chronic with his finishing and distribution in the final third.

There's no real substance to this argument that we've been found out - if that were the case then you would expect there to be one solution to beating us - but there hasn't been: leeds, boro and sheffield all played completely differently against us - are you therefore suggesting that each of them had independently worked out three wildly different ways of beating us? Not so - we simply didn't play well enough. It's fair to say that a lot of teams have adopted a tactic of having a brief press early on before sitting deep and then going for it for the last 10-30 minutes, but so far only sheffield and perhaps boro have actually gained anything from doing that, and even then better game management from us should have kept sheffield out. But that's an approach we've seen from day 1 - only a few teams have done anything different. Sheffield didn't come in with some radical tactic they'd worked out to combat our system, they just parked the bus and, unlike earlier in the season, we didn't play well enough to break it down more than once. As for changing the system - i refer you to my original post - you can't try to augment a system that you haven't even mastered. Running before we can walk - unfortunately that 'blistering start' as you say has ended up causing a problem, for me that seems to be the perception from fans that we are the finished article and should already be expanding the options we have, tactically - the fact is we've simply moved out of the freedom of a new system into the reality of having to play that system every week.

Summarising the style of play or performance without referencing the tactical issues is something for the post-match thread, none of the posts raised a point, this thread is for tactical discussion, not simply expressing one's mood.

I think it's really hard to accurately gauge 'progress' with so many new elements in play - I think there was a certain amount of new manager bounce, new system bounce, new player bounce - and that pretty much relates to an increased sense of fearlessness and confidence - we seem to have now reached a stage where we're still playing the same system, but with out that confidence and fearlessness - we've come down to earth and now players are starting to overthink or rush or second guess and that's resulted in a downturn in performance quality - it was bound to happen at some point. It's not that teams are suddenly knowing how to get results against us, it's that we've experienced a dip in the quality of our own play. The way we're approaching games is the same as when we were winning, but the actual application of the game plan has become poor.

Get match fit? I think he needs to have a run out as a sub before we start looking at starting him!

Can't see us not having a word about him in january - seems made for our system.

I think he's better at unlocking defences than fatawu, and useful on set pieces. Fatawu seems made for brining on when the defenders are knackered.

Height? Link up play? I get that fatawu is 'exciting' but he's also wasteful, Mcateer still has one of the highest goals/90 in the league.

Clearly not considered a fit enough option to warrant dropping casadei. It's not like we have a weak bench - any player is going to have to impress even to get on the bench....

Needs to see some real hustle from nacho today.

But we've also been poor at putting away chances - it works both ways - we're no better than most of the teams at this level for wasting good chances. The other save he made was from vardy, which i don't recall, but this just emphasises the point above - our finishing was worse than there's - we had 12 shots 3 on target they had 14 and 7. leeds scored after 58 minutes, boro 83 - we'd have had considerably more time tonight, against a much poorer team. There was nothing wrong with our possession at the back, it was what we failed to do up front that was the problem - though we were poor at the end with our clearances and game management.

But even then if we're getting off 23 shots against watford, they haven't worked us out, that's just us being rubbish. Sheffield and middlesborough may have done what you said, but so did most of the other teams we played and beat earlier in the season - they didn't do anything tactically damning, they just sat deep - the difference was that we didn't have the penetration we have previously had. maresca's key philosophy is to get men in the box but we're not doing that anymore.

If you think being top of the league regardless of how it is achieved is shite then i have no words. If you think that anyone, just by turning up to manage us, would also get us up then i have no words

To expect enzo to have got this far without making any mistakes would be absurd - i think he's got most of it right, i feel like this recent dip is less about the style we play and more about the execution, it feels the problem lies with subpar performances from the squad, especially in the attacking third - i don't believe enzo has them on a leash (what was it 23 shots against watford?) - i simply believe that the players are having issues either overthinking or underthinking. Fpr me, the real test of enzo is how he corrects this, how he gets them back to their early season form.

Explain to me what part of losing 1-0 was successful?

Granted we were poor to give away the ball for those chances, but that's no guarantee they'll take them - for the first mads get his angles spot on, the 2nd vestergaard makes a fine block - it wasn't just that they were poor, we responded really well to the situations. Besides, if they had scored the first, you don't think they'd have immediately parked the bus, you don't think we'd have had much more urgency? falling behind early has never been game over for us this season. Once we'd settled, we totally controlled the game, played some good build up, a few really nice attacking phases, got the goal, should have done better in the final third. The only truly awful things was our game management in the last 15 minutes.

It's working in terms of we've been playing together with this squad and system for less than half a season - there's still much to learn and masses of room for improvement. And we've simply fallen into that same problem you mention - the quality of chances wasted by our opponents us has been quite shocking.

like sunderland?

How - by scoring a scrappy late winner, or a worldy freekick, or getting a fortuitous break from a corner? Just because we aren't winning doesn't mean that it is because teams know how to stop us, it's because our standards have dropped.