The Doctor

Completely different play styles for a start. if the most you can say is "they've not played in the premier league" just go the full hog and start saying he couldn't do it on a rainy Tuesday night at Stoke. is the signing a risk? yes, every signing is. Doesn't change the fact that his profile is impressive and it is the sort of signing we're desperately crying out for

Honestly if people aren't going to see that Rudkin is grossly incompetent after this, they never will. Cooper is far from blameless in this, this sort of signing is his idea, but any competent DoF should be telling him absolutely not, the deal doesn't represent good value and you don't need him. If you really want a defensive winger who can't score, we already got you Bobby de Cordova Reid, and he was free. Like what's his role going to be? run around a bit and win free kicks? we've got players who can do that already. if you really really want to be a team that just wins set pieces and scores from them, you've already got two tricky wingers who will get fouled regularly, you need someone who can take them and someone who can score from them. Sara was both and we didn't bother going back in with an increased bid because we had to save money for Skipp and Jordan ****in Ayew?? We've got basically no goals in the midfield having lost KDH, our only fit striker is a 38 year old who has to have his minutes managed, better ignore those and go all out for a man who gets booked as much as he scores despite allegedly being a forward. When Cooper gets sacked, and he will pretty quickly because he's out of his depth in the prem, we're then lumbered with yet another unsellable asset just reducing our headroom in PSR, because there's no long range plan with Rudkin, the world's most incompetent DoF. Just let every single manager change the style drastically and rebuild the squad to fix that, let's pretend we've got the commercial income to allow more PSR headroom to do that. We deserve every single points deduction we get.

Mavididi got no time for their "can you say it like this" stuff

Right, but going into that season, our previous championship squad had a combined 434 prem appearances, and over 70% of those were from one player (Nugent 64, Waghorn 6, Kasper 8, De Laet 3, Taylor-Fletcher 31, Wood 3, Konchesky 319). Coming into this summer our squad had 1255 (Ward 29, Iversen 12, JJ 63, Wout 31, Coady 176, Kristensen 12, Ricardo 102, Vestegaard 82, Thomas 68, Wilf 192, Winks 128, Daka 53, Vardy 307). Add in BDCR (128), Skipp (77) and Buonanotte (40) and we're at 1,500 prem appearances in our current squd. The "experienced pros" and the much vaunted premier league experience is already well covered.

this is full on cooperism, bollocks about "premier league experience" rather than being bothered about whether they're any good

I mean I was thinking the Titanic but full support for putting Kent 12000ft below sea level

https://news.sky.com/story/sailing-yachts-like-mike-lynchs-are-unsinkable-bodies-ceo-of-boat-manufacturing-firm-says-13200883 "this boat that sunk is unsinkable". now where have I heard that before?

pfft, get it on the gov petition site alongside these gems: critical support for banning James Corden from entering the UK tbh

our record against the other top 8 sides last season was W6 D3 L5 not exactly suspect, particularly since given 4 of those 5 defeats we were dominant in (Leeds A, Hull H, Middlesbrough H and A) and just couldn't finish. Nor were we overly safe last year. We shredded teams who tried to go toe to toe with us (Southampton and Schumacher's Plymouth/Stoke) but games against e.g. Rotherham coming and sticking 11 in their own box is going to be attritional, wear them down mentally by moving it around style football. there's a simple reason why even teams down into leagues one and two now play more passing football, pitches are better than they were 20+ years ago so you can play that way easier, and it's ultimately what is most effective. if we'd tried to play the cavalier counter football fans wanted last season, we'd have finished midtable and been complaining because you can't counter teams that won't attack - when teams would attack (Southampton, Leeds away) we did rip through them, dicked Southampton 9-1 on aggregate and should have been 3 or 4 up at Leeds before they scored.

if we replace Ricardo with Serge Aurier we should just fold as a club, what a rancid idea.

I mean sure it gets the crowd going, but that and playing good football aren't necessarily in alignment. British fans are obsessed with athleticism and power more than technical ability, and it fed into academies for a long time, hence why this is the first generation of English players with a good surplus of technically skilled attacking players. British fans will always respond more positively to for instance a big tackle than an interception despite the big tackle being necessary due to poor awareness meaning the interception wasn't made (Maldini was one of the finest defenders I've ever seen and he barely ever made a tackle because he didn't need to, read the situations before they developed) and won't get going for a more chess like philosophy, even if that philosophy produces better performances and has the foundations for more sustained success

full support for billionaires continuing to mock posiedon and find out.

very much dependent on the opposition, but given where wilf plays you can expect often it will be the striker immediately dropping on to him or an attacking mid/winger coming in from the side

that is, by far and away, one of the most effective ways of playing through a press, shift them by deliberately activating their pressing triggers. the problem is that the player that is their pressing trigger needs to be very good on the ball to quickly switch those passes out and break the press, and it's fair to say that that's not exactly Ndidis wheelhouse.

slight correction, I'm into analytics. xG is one of them, and has had the most public cut through, however it's not the only metric. given our xG wasn't consistently higher than Spurs, understat and Fbref models both put it lower: https://understat.com/match/26611 https://fbref.com/en/matches/62eea1d6/Leicester-City-Tottenham-Hotspur-August-19-2024-Premier-League you can't really say we had the best chances, arguably equivalent (not that I've seen a model that puts our xG higher but I'll trust your claim there is one). As for analytics - there's nothing much impressive in our stats as a whole. Pressing is non-existent, there's no creativity in there (we made 7 passes into the penalty area all night, Porro nearly matched that on his own). not exactly happy at the waste of Hermansens skill in there either, mans got better passing than half the midfielders in this division but is spending half his time punting it long.

not sure what people saw in that to be positive besides the effort second half, because let's be honest it was a league one side vs prem side in the cup standard performance, get absolutely battered, rescued by your keeper and hope in the 15/20 minutes you get a big chance.

he won't. first half is what he did over and over again at Forest, he won't learn shit from it and a rally in the last half hour which would have been irrelevant if spurs had taken their chances doesn't change that. If spurs could finish their dinner then we'd be sat here talking about a 5 or 6 goal defeat. Most teams aren't going to let us off that easily.

nor did Bouba tbh. fair play he did get the second half right, but it wouldn't have mattered a jot if spurs had put their shooting boots on first half. Clearly got the starting line up wrong, the tactics were non existent and given it's the sort of thing he was doing at Forest I don't think he makes Christmas, because that first half will keep happening

I mean, lets be under no illusions. While the second half was better, they should have absolutely mullered us. Stole a point because Solanke rediscovered his pre 4-1 in the end of the covid season form. Need to improve in how we set up from the off drastically.

out of nothing. Get in.

the one player who's looked competent, but then he has only had a week with Cooper so give it time.

Yea, it's basically this.

Ange, get your forwards sorted at half time. We're not getting anything out of this game, might as well get absolutely smashed so there's nowhere for the board to hide.

Pretty sure saying they're selling tickets to a football match is false advertising based on this performance.

i wish. Getting 2003/04 vibes, followed by years in the doldrums again.