Les-TA-Jon

I would be. Whilst Ipswich continue to do well it's the gap with 3rd that matters, not with Ipswich. It'd be annoying to miss out on the title (especially tied with Man City for most 2nd division titles) but I'd take 2nd right now in a heartbeat - it's about going up

Literally conceded only 4 goals in the final 15 mins of games all season, but OK

As opposed to those weak, slow, players who can't play or pass, that many others are crying out for?

Yes. I literally said "marginally better form in the shorter term samples"

Depends which group of games you arbitrarily use though. 20 games: Leicester 49 points, 2.5ppg / Leeds 41 points, 2.1ppg 12 games: Leicester 28 points, 2.3ppg / Leeds 28 points, 2.3ppg 10 games: Leicester 22 points, 2.2pgg / Leeds 25 points, 2.5ppg 5 games: Leicester 10 points, 2ppg / Leeds 13 points, 2.6ppg So yes, marginally better form in the shorter term samples, same over long term and of course, crucially 8 points worse over the season

Leicester and Ipswich who have 'overperformed' by 10.3 and 12.5 points, respectively. Leeds meanwhile have only 'overperformed' by 1.9 points, so it's them who are 'where there should be' One interpretation of this is that for Ipswich and Leicester, the only way is down; their form is not sustainable. Leeds 'only' need to have a period of overperformance of their own and/or Leicester/Ipswich to regress to 'normal' form, to overtake one or both rivals. What's in Leeds favour is that they've played all 3 of the top 4 away and won 2 of those games. Having all 3 at home in the 2nd half of the season is handy. Regardless, though the quality being set by the Top 4 is ridiculous and surely it can't be sustained across all those teams for much longer!?

https://theanalyst.com/eu/2023/12/is-the-championship-table-lying-to-us/ Interesting article. Opta simulated match outcomes based on xG 10,000 times per match to show expected vs actual points/table positions. Leeds 'should' be top. But they're not because Leicester and Ipswich have overperformed by 10.3 and 12.5 points, respectively. Leeds have actually slightly overperformed too, with 41 actual vs 39.1 expected points. Either way, it's going to be a crazy 2nd half of the season. The top 4 are setting crazy standards. Last 12 matches: 28 points for each team (27 for Ipswich)

Iheanacho Ndidi Fatawu Daka who is the 5th?

this is such a crazy/binary benchmark by which to judge a keeper. We've conceded 12 goals this season. 1 is a direct result of a pass/mistake from Hermansen. So 8%. We've scored 34 goals. So are you saying unless we can directly show that Hermansen's style has resulted in 2.7 goals (8%) it's pointless him playing this way and he should just stop faffing about and only focus on being a keeper? It's about patterns of play. It's about creating overloads and beating the press. It's a team game - who's to say that at least 3 of our late goals this season can't be attributed to the opposition being knackered, because their press has been passed through - in part enabled by Hermansen's role in the team?

OK one goal then. My argument is in shambles.../s He's literally the best ball playing goalkeeper in the club's history. I wonder what it would take for you to trust him

Blimey everyone's entitled to an opinion but it's clear you've just simply got an agenda against Iheanacho now...

Hard disagree. Firstly, Hermansen's passing has lead to ZERO goals conceded in 18 matches, so on that basic measure it's not a problem. Hermansen is being instructed to make 'risky' line breaker/vertical passes into midfield, to find (primarily) Winks/Ricardo. He try far more short passes that most keepers in the division and try more high risk passes than most, so even with his high % success rate, his mistakes are likely to look worse, simply because he tries it more often and when he does it's higher risk. It is worth the tradeoff because 1) as above we haven't even conceded a goal from it and 2) even when we do, so what? We get far more benefit from his positional play, comfort with the ball at feet and passes into defence and midfield than we do from him 'playing it safe' He (along with Vestergaard) is key to us beating the press and he allows us to play 4 at the back when in possession, even with Ricardo pushed up alongside Winks. He helps us create another area of domination/overloads I think his match changing saves have gone under the radar simply because we've won so many matches, but to say 'he's put us in trouble as much as get us out of it' is just plainly, demonstrably false I think most fans who have seen us play this season would struggle to describe him as "dodgy". His keeping has been fine. I can't remember a single flap, fumble or dodgy moment. Some key/great saves here and there. With the ball at feet, he's so comfortable he's foundational to how we play, as discussed above.

Yes but most teams don't have multiple players in the top 25 scorers like we do. It's only Coventry, Hull, Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester, Norwich and Plymouth that do, and we've got the most - with 4 players.

Alves is rightly highly rated, but I'd be surprised to see much of him this season at all. He's only just 18 and is tiny. How's he cut out for the Championship?

Is that true? It's from a few matchdays back, but Opta also had this analysis, which has us and them 'overperforming' by 8.3 and 9.2 points respectively.

The trade off though is that we're so solid defensively. The opposition rarely gets to run at us and rarely gets any transitions. (Which is what makes Vestergaard look so good this season)

We're in a great position. But let's not forget similar analysis and 'supercomputers' predicted we'd get Top 4 twice and avoid relegation... This also doesn't account for AFCON, and the january window and situation with Ndidi and Iheanacho Reality is, it's a 4 horse race for the top 2, with all 4 teams on track for 90+ points

Thing is they don't even do that - they just sort of talk about something as if it's a stat, without backing it up with cold, hard data - they said 'it feels like KDH has been a match winner a lot for Leicester' It's true - but they could at least do their homework - like I do Edit: Correction - McAteer on 6, Ndidi on 0 - it was McAteer's goal that had us leading the Southampton game, not Ndidi's

To be fair that was valid though. He'd been peripheral at Spurs for a couple of years. Even when he was playing for them regularly can't say I ever noticed him or his skill set. Then he was out on loan at Sampdoria where he was injured a bit and got relegated. 1 year left on his contract and seemingly no other interest in him and we sign him for £8-10m. On those measures it didn't look a great signing/it looked like Spurs swindled us a bit.

He's Loans Manager

There’s a lot of, and increasing criticism of Hermansen (especially in his thread) for those sorts of passes

Yes. Note that my comment was complete sarcasm at all the idiots here who see Hermansen make a few risky passes into midfield a few times, and think they whole system is asking for trouble and not worth it (despite it being foundational to how we play and yet to actually directly lead to a goal conceded...)

Vestergaard has been great this season, and whilst his skill set is important for our system, it's also our system + our relation to the rest of the division that makes him look so good. He rarely has to actually defend, because we're so careful to reduce the number of transitions we concede.

Notice how a lot of moves start from those 'braindead and risky' linebreaker passes from Hermansen/Vestergaard into Winks/Ricardo/Iheanacho...

all 4 teams currently on track for 90+ points, so definitely going to be an anomalous season and a tight, 4 horse race for Autos.