funkyrobot

He was massively under-used in pre season. Got token minutes at the soft end of the games when all the subs had been made and the minutes were being played out. Cooper then signs a lad the same age, but one who had actually been trusted significant game time by his parent club to play in his position. Doesn’t exactly send positive signals to Alves or the fans. If Alves is good enough (and I think he is) and when it’s clear we are struggling to buy creativity, he should be a much bigger priority within the squad.

Clever from LCFC, significantly weaken Spurs on the eve of the match… Only joking, Skipp might be a sensible signing if a little uninspiring from a creativity perspective. Not only is he a better footballer to support Winks than Ndidi and Hamza, he’s also better to be the pivot replacement for when Winks is unavailable. Not sure what it means in terms of Hamza this season though. It’s does however leave us still very short creatively. Buonanotte looks like our only option as clearly the boss doesn’t fancy Alves for whatever reason. The Brighton lad will definitely miss two games against his parent club (hate that rule) and will pick up an injury at some point. At 19 he can’t be relied on alone anyway.

I’m not saying deploy it continually but try and utilise it where possible, keep it as an option. Particularly when our squad is built to play that way and we aren’t able to make wholesale changes despite Cooper demanding it. The invert does still leave 3 at the back with a pivot ahead so it’s not exactly kamikaze, particularly when Fatawu is happy to provide support. You do have to try and win games and Cooper’s more defensive set up definitely did not work against Lens. Set up to draw or snatch a win with a defence like ours is likely to be as risky as some of our attempts to beat the press last season.

Who are you gonna play left wing though? BDCR and Fatawu both prefer and are better on the right. By playing Mavididi as a centre forward you are effectively playing someone out of position on the left. If Cannon plays, the wingers can play in their best positions.

Yeh this is the formation I’d go with. Similar to Enzo’s way but with Ndidi slightly more defensive and with an attempt to bring Buonanotte centrally at times. I’d still try and invert Ricardo though when on the ball. Cooper definitely won’t go with it though. No way he plays Cannon and I think he’ll bench Ricardo, Vesty and even Buonanotte. He’ll play Okoli, Hamza, Mavididi up front and he’ll fit BDCR in. As I say I wouldn’t be surprised if he went fully rogue and played Fatawu on his wrong side where he was anonymous when Cooper tried it in preseason. I think he’ll play Justin at RB and at left back he might even bring in Thomas. I thought he preferred VK but he mentioned that Thomas was back from injury so that might explain his absence. I really hope that his sticks with our best fullback in Ricardo and our best proven left back in Justin but pre season has really made me doubt Cooper’s approach to team selection. I think he’ll try and grind out a 0-0 with a predominantly non footballing defence and a triple CDM set up and it will fail. Hope I’m wrong.🤞

Based on a bizarre pre season I’m going to take a guess at Cooper’s formation v Spursy. He seems to love a player or two out of position. GK Mads RB Justin CD Faes CD Okoli LWB VK CM Winks CM Hamza CM Ndidi RW BDCR LW Fatawu CF Mavididi I’d play GK Mads RB (inverted) Ricardo Faes Vesty Justin CDM Winks No 8 Ndidi No 8 Buonanotte RW Fatawu LW Mavididi CF Cannon Both teams will lose but my one will do it with a bit more attacking intent and a bit more hope. 😂

A painful podcast to listen to. Great information for Hoffenheim fans tho tbf.

Asprilla will have us as his 5th favourite club to join based on the list above. No chance. Get it locked and direct ALL traffic to the Ayew thread.

Yeh he played in the friendlies against Shrewsbury and then Palermo. Was on the bench against Augsburg but wasn’t given game time and then dropped to the u23’s before RC Lens. £4m for an u23 squad player.

Cooper is definitely not going to start TC, he’s already shown he’d rather play players out of position to get Mavididi central despite this impacting on multiple positions rather than playing him.

I wish he’d been pushed more on his treatment of Cannon. The fact is he was given the least amount of pitch time during pre season of the fit strikers. It has felt all along that Cooper doesn’t rate him and as such he got the game time of a player destined for a loan or a full transfer. He’s had minimal opportunities and now Cooper is in position where he’s the only out and out fit number 9. I suspect Cooper will still put Mavididi centrally and play BDCR in the LW role or Fatawu there (despite it being clear he’s better as a RW) further damaging the lad’s confidence. Giving Cannon more opportunity and at least pretending he was in his plans would’ve maybe helped the team whilst a new striker is sought.

Can we lock all transfer links except for Ayew? There’s no point in even pretending we are looking for anyone else. Just keep the Ayew thread open until he rejects a move at midnight on transfer deadline day. It’ll save everyone a lot of time.

Lock this ffs

Cooper has dropped Golding to the u23’s. His focus on youth development appears to be a fallacy. The only time he definitely showed it was when he was managing England u17’s and he had no choice! He’s ignored Alves, Braybrooke, Golding, Marcal, and even MacAteer during this pre season.

Cracks me up that just because Rudkin et al are incompetent, suddenly it’s poor old Cooper. Can I remind everyone that he’s shifted our formation from using an inverted fullback and a player that has fulfilled that role very effectively attacking & defensively in Ricardo and changed it to put the overload to our weakest position at left back. He’s still trying to achieve the same outcome of 5 attack 5 defense but his inability to play the Enzo style has had massive repercussions.To enable this change he’s dropped Ricardo and asked the weakest fullback of our main 3 choices - VK, to perform a role as an overload on the left that he isn’t great at. This has had detrimental knock on effects for Mavididi on the Left Wing and Fatawu on the right and has also meant we’ve had to look to buy a specialist number 10 when it would’ve been much easier to fill the less specialised and cheaper number 8 role that KDH had. Cooper’s new system also means Mads in goal under-utilises his footballing abilities and we lose that extra man when building play. Cooper has tried to fit players into a new system that definitely requires an expensive and challenging signing (a number 10) when he could’ve used the current set up that his current players are more used to and made it slightly more pragmatic where necessary during the friendlies.

Get him locked down on a 6 year contract, fcuk it, give his bro one as well.

Close thread and announce the Brothers Ayew.

We need to accept that every road this transfer window is going to lead to Jordan Ayew. We need a replacement for KDH, tried to get Soule, we’ll sign Ayew. We need an alternative winger, tried to sign Zaha, we’ll sign Ayew. We need a 2 new centre forwards, tried to sign Hozlek and Fofana, we’ll sign Ayew. We need a new back up keeper to Mads, tried to sign Johnstone, we’ll sign Ayew. We need a new left back, we’ll sign Ayew. Just fkin announce us signing him at 33 years old on a 3 year contract on £80k. Then within months get the club to talk about needing to manage his hours due to his age.

I’m not saying necessarily replace Fatawu or Mavididi, I’m just saying we need some key players - we need a replacement for KDH, we need a quality alternative to Vardy etc. To get players above their level yes you are looking at plus £20m, and that’s why loans are a very likely option. At some point the academy player rule will change. It’s forcing clubs to use the young players as a commodity rather than developing them at their home club and it feels wrong both from a player treatment perspective and from a fans perspective. The KDH transfer feels wrong, the Gallagher transfer at Chelsea feels wrong. Both clubs have lost players that had a significant connection with their home fans.

It’ll be just our luck to re-sign Chilly and draw Millwall away in the cup.

I don’t see either Mavididi or Fatawu quite at that level yet. *Based on what I’ve seen of BDCR I’m not sure he’s much better than K-Mac! I always feel Kasey is a goal threat.

My concern over Ayew (and BDCR) is both age and that whilst they were both liked by their respective fans, they were both support players, neither were game changers and Ayew excelled in a team were the heavy work was done by a combination of Olise, Eze and Mateta. Ayew’s energy was a great addition but he was not their game changer. Here at Leicester we really need some key top level potential game changers and not more and more support players.

The VK transfer has always seemed a bit fishy to me.

If you are paying £80k a week you aren’t paying for potential. Daka earns significantly more than players that you would see as potential here and at big 6 clubs - Doku at Man City is on £60k, Gallagher at Chelsea was on £50k. Based on our wage structure Daka is paid as an established pro which he was at Red Bull. If you want to compare, Faes is on £50k, Justin on even less, A good analyst also uses the eye test, scouting is done by watching a player and looking at his stats. A footballer plays on a pitch, not a spreadsheet. The fact that your statistics appear to show you that Daka has been a success when he clearly hasn’t backs that up.

No that stat doesn’t address his all round ability. It’s a figure that doesn’t outline if the chances were his own or ones he’d created for others and it doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t hold the ball up well , isn’t a great passer and isn’t a dribbler as this is absolutely clear from watching him. He’s like the modern day Gary Lineker without the world class finishing ability and it nearly cost us winning the league last season. Your comment about his age etc conveniently omits that when a player is signed for over £23 million and accepts an £80k a week wage he will be judged accordingly.