funkyrobot

Belgium are a better team than Denmark and significantly a better team than Wales. You can take also take Ward out of this argument as there’s barely any Welsh keepers playing senior pro football!

Your Enzo prediction is a guess mate, nothing more. We’ll never know. Based on what I’ve seen pre season, I’d take Enzo’s way over Cooper’s way every day of the week. I think the majority would. You’d be crazy to think Cooperball has been anything other than utterly dire to date. That’s not sniping, that’s an undeniable reality. Hopefully he can change it around but as we speak he seems as far away from being a success as you could imagine. Even if the outcome is the same as you have guessed with Enzo that we’d be relegated, there is no enjoyment in watching the anti-football of the past 3 friendlies and I’d rather be relegated trying to enact some coherent plan from Enzo even with its inherent frustrations for some spectators. Cooper didn’t have a single plan in the prem btw. Firstly his team scored goals but could defend, then he switched to pragmatism and couldn’t score. He never found the balance and was sacked. I also genuinely don’t see what’s wrong with comparing what we had with what we’ve got btw? Assessing whether Cooper was a good replacement for Enzo is exactly what the senior management should be doing over the next few months. Isn’t that how we could learn from mistakes? Unfortunately judging by the many repeated failings Rudkin et al seem as unwilling to try and learn from history as you do.

Guessing a future performance of Enzo at Leicester had he stayed is way more of what you would call a ‘pointless gotcha.’ If we look at their two pre seasons - Enzo’s LCFC team in pre season looked way better drilled on his plan than Cooper’s team has done this season - that’s an undeniable fact. Even when we were smashed by Liverpool, there was a clear plan. It is also entirely reasonable to compare the two managers. I would’ve expected the new manager to carry on the project Enzo had started and indeed Cooper indicated this with his comments when appointed. Enzo brought clarity and coached and enthused players with his approach irrespective of whether they were perfect for his system from the very beginning - Cooper simply hasn’t done that and fallen into the Brendan Rodgers approach of demanding transfers as the only solution when that can only be part of the solution. Btw what was Cooper’s plan at Forest in the prem? I’m not convinced there was one, he flitted from one approach to another, stopped attacking when his team couldn’t defend and became entirely pragmatic. His success was to be very slightly less worse than a LCFC team that had downed tools under Rodgers.

Lens looked so much better drilled and had a clear collective system of play and yet their manager Will Still was appointed at the same time as Cooper took on the Leicester job.

I think the point is it’s way better to have a stubborn coach in Enzo with a detailed Plan A identity and no Plan B that can work to an extent with the cards he’s been dealt and develop an existing player (e.g Ricardo) to fit that stubborn plan, than a coach in Cooper that appears to have no Plan A whatsoever and is expecting mythical new signings as his ONLY solution to the problem.

Faes is good enough. He’s a Belgian international. You might not like him but he has to start over Nelson. Nelson hasn’t had enough game time & specifically pre season game time to be dropped into the spurs role in such a critical position on the pitch.

You can only play either Ndidi or Hamza alongside Winks, otherwise you are effectively setting up with a deep pivot and 2 CDM’s. There’s no creativity. Cooper wants a number 10 to replace the creative number 8 that we lost when KDH went. He could’ve played Alves, Golding or a utility player like Reid in that role or accepted that he can’t really fit an out and out 10 with our current squad set up and revert back to the very successful two number 8’s with an inverted Ricardo! Alves and Golding may not be quite ready but in a pre season situation that’s surely fine, the more they play, the more ready they’ll be. Cooper’s interest in developing youth has proven to be a fallacy during this pre season. His reputation with developing youth comes from his spell with England youth when he had no choice. Now he has a choice of playing younger players in their position or playing older players out of position, he’s steadfastly stuck to the latter.

That is true but I was just assessing on a more basic level that Holloway did try and encourage his team to try and get possession of the ball in the opponents half some of the time.

It took me back to the very bad old days of Ian Holloway’s LCFC. Tactically inept, no game plan, players playing out of position, better players benched, a lack of creativity. Tbf to Holloway I’d at least say he had more attacking intent than Cooper has shown in the last 3 games.

Coady definitely won’t play as he’s injured but why would you play him anyway? I don’t see him with any other attributes other than being a good talker that puts him ahead of Faes or Vesty.

Hermansen Ricardo Faes Vestergaard Justin Winks Ndidi Buonanotte Fatawu Mavididi Zaha (or Cannon if/or more likely when he doesn’t sign.)

Cooper has to take a lot of blame for that performance today. No obvious press, no clear tactics on or off the ball. Minimal effort at times, endless hoof ball. Better players benched. That was all on him.

Vestergaard is our best footballing centre half. If we want to play out from the back (he was attempting to do that today against Lens) then he needs to play as the others can’t do it to the same extent. I would’ve expected Okoli to have been signed as a faster version but it’s been clear in his first few games that he’s not a ball playing centre back. I’m not sure why he was signed tbh.

Why did he bench Ricardo, Mavididi and Verstergaard and play less able players in their roles instead then?

I think it’s entirely reasonable to say that the signings of VK and Cannon have been unsuccessful for both the team and the players themselves irrespective of their age. VK was signed to help us stave off relegation and that failed, he then was deemed surplus to requirements last season in The Championship. Cannon wasn’t trusted in The Championship even when Daka was stinking the place up and that’s continued into this Cooper era.

I get the lack of recruitment but Cooper could at least play his better players in their favoured positions. He had better players on the bench than in his starting 11. Mavididi is better at LW than Reid. Ricardo is our best full back but it also better playing next to Winks than Hamza. Verstergaard is our best footballing centre back, Alves was the best creative number 8 available today. Golding didn’t even travel. He picks a weaker starting 11 and then gives them no structure to play.

‘We actually looked ok’

We have a weaker squad than the team that got us promoted definitely, the loss of the creativity of KDH, as well as the quality squad depth of Nacho, Praet and Akgun has gone BUT Cooper isn’t even picking the best players. He's benching some of them! If you’ve got a weaker squad but you are actively selecting a weaker starting 11 out of that weaker squad and even then playing some of this starting 11 in less effective roles, then the outcome that we’ve seen is inevitable!

I assumed Golding was injured and that’s why he wasn’t involved against Lens, now I’m hearing he was fine and with the U21’s?? What’s the point of signing him for that amount of money and then not giving him proper time pre season?? I thought Cooper was keen to develop youth and yet he’s shown the exact opposite since he’s been here. Braybrooke, given no opportunity and Alves and Golding just a token few minutes.

Let’s just not have a striker and go full Cooperball. Cooper could bring in another midfield water carrier to go alongside Hamza and Ndidi. Maybe Raikhy can step in to add a further lack of creativity in the middle.

Only Vardy is a loss. Daka is a liability and Coady is brilliant off the pitch but not great on the pitch, having the same lack of pace as Vesty but not the same level of ability on the ball as the big dane.

Early days but today he looked like he couldn’t trap a bag of cement or pass a ball to anyone in a blue shirt.

If you are aiming to lose then yes. Playing a player out of position is one of the best ways to achieve that aim.

Cooper unfortunately would also rather play Mavididi out of position than Mavididi in position. I don’t think anything Cooper does at the moment should be used to justify a point. He’s currently making bizarre anti-football decisions all over the pitch.

2 shots, both off target.