smudgerfox Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 The success of the gamble Claudio Ranieri made with his team selection for the Porto game will only become clear in the coming weeks. The Premier League fixture list now accelerates into the Christmas season, a season in which we rarely perform well, (in last season’s glory we managed four festive points from twelve).There will be precious little time for tactical rehearsal and confidence rebuild. Then 2017 brings another transfer window. The Porto surrender clearly demonstrated the need to reinforce a flagging squad and simultaneously made that reinforcement more difficult. Champions League football is usually a big draw for ambitious talent. But what will Leicester City be offering any new signing in January? One “glamour tie” with the aim of avoiding further humiliation in Europe’s premier sporting competition. Oh and a relegation dog fight added on. A win, a draw, even a narrow defeat in Portugal, would have maintained the fiction that fundamentally all is well at the club. That if Champions League form can be repeated on “bread and butter” days, the Premier points will start to mount up again. To not have seen the importance of retaining our Champions League “aura” in this way, is a catastrophic error on the part of our manager, and one which may ultimately cost him his job. The defeat, and particularly the nature of the defeat, has laid bare that Leicester’s Premier winning squad is paper thin with virtually no quality, match-ready replacements to call upon. That the squad is tactically inflexible, incapable of playing to more than one system, which even the most modest of opponents now know how to counter, a state of affairs to which Claudio has been unable to provide any effective response. That the infamous team spirit which produced so many improbable results last season, is as shattered as one of Jeffrey Schlupp’s sports cars on the hard shoulder. That, incredibly, after the events of last season, that some of the team would prefer not to be at the King Power, setting their sights on such glamorous settings as The Hawthorns. In short, Porto, has confirmed Leicester City as a club in crisis. A crisis which will require radical action to put right and action which our opponents will do everything in their power to frustrate. Take that January transfer window. Most supporters are concentrating on the players we need to add. But we may well spend January, as we did much of the summer: reading transfer speculation about Mahrez, Vardy, Schmeichel and Drinkwater. After last night, what do we have to keep them here? And even if they do stay, the speculation is likely to prove disruptive and unhelpful to signing new recruits. So, in Portugal, Ranieri sacrificed a fragile but nevertheless useful, appearance of calm normality at LCFC, exposing the club to the full glare of a media crisis investigation. That’s unlikely to be pretty. Nor helpful. He has also broken an important connection with the fans. Fielding a weakened, unmotivated and tactically unprepared side for an away Champions League match is hugely disrespectful to those who paid good money to support the team in Porto. Such a witless performance also showed a lack of awareness of our responsibility to the integrity of the competition. The claim of FC Copenhagen to a place in the last 16 demanded that we compete. We failed to do so. In that we also sacrificed the canny knack the club developed last season for “doing the right thing.” Our modest dignity was one of the reasons the club’s success was so widely popular last season. That seems to have gone now too. Yet Ranieri’s gamble was not quite as dramatic as is being widely reported. Yes there were ten changes. But up front we had Ahmed Musa who has Champions League appearances with CKSA Moscow to his name. Alongside, Okazaki – thus far this season’s brightest star. Maybe not a first choice striker combination but one that ought to be competitive. In midfield, Mendy and Drinkwater is probably the best central pairing we have. Many of us have been clamouring for Gray to start. Schlupp, normally, is solid with some forward threat, usually as a result of his pace. It’s not an unreasonable four. However, the back five, have never played as a unit before and it was their frailties which left us so badly exposed. A third choice keeper who’s been rejected in the past, at right back, a centre back with an established reputation for losing his marker. Plus Wasilewski, whose limitations are well documented and whose performance at the Emirates last February should have put an end to any prospect of a new contract. Not an ideal set-up in which to introduce a rookie left back. This defensive line-up was a disaster waiting to happen. Part of me thinks Claudio knew that. And I’m pretty certain the players knew it and felt they’d been hung out to dry, in full public view. Ranieri’s justification is puzzling. He wants to save the best players so they’re fresh for Man City. But Mahrez, Vardy, Slimani and Huth are all struggling for form and might have regained some confidence in a high profile match, in which there was little for Leicester to lose and the opposition needed to push for a win. Zieler would surely have benefitted from another 90 minutes with the first choice defence in front of him. The other explanation offered is that Claudio has players asking why they’re not being given a chance to play – so he gave them that chance. But is this the way to nurture Gray and Chilwell, to integrate Musa or to develop Hamer? To put them in a team with a bits-and-pieces defence, against a young, hungry talented team from an experienced European club, and tell them to get on with it? What in fact we may be witnessing is a fundamental disagreement between the coach and the recruitment side of the club. While a lot is said about Kante and Mahrez, rather less is said about Inler and Benalouane – both expensive signings who have barely kicked a ball in the City first team. These are players who both arrived with a good pedigree who Claudio seems to rate as simply not good enough. Musa was told on arrival he was not first-team ready, Kapustka has suffered the same fate. Presumably someone, somewhere, at some point, thought these players would add to the potency of our squad. The fact that the manager didn’t, doesn’t, is a cause for major concern. These underlying disagreements were largely hidden last season by the low injury and suspension rate and a more easily managed fixture list. Claudio was able to call upon a relatively small number of players, all of whom he trusted. But it is now a critical fault line at the heart of our club. Steve Walsh famously had to persuade Ranieri to sign Kante, Ranieri clearly wanted Gray after seeing him play in a pre-season friendly. I find it hard to believe that the captain of the Swiss national team was totally unsuitable for the Premiership. Zieler is demonstrably an inadequate replacement for the large presence of Schmeichel. It is not easy to determine whose judgement we should trust. What is apparent is that there is disagreement about which positions need strengthening (the lack of defensive reinforcement really was a crime last summer) and which players best meet those needs. And time ticks on to the heavy Christmas fixture programme, the January transfer window and beyond, to February and a last 16 tie in the Champions League. I don’t want to believe that Ranieri’s team selection for Porto was a deliberate act designed to illustrate to persons unknown, the lack of strength in depth in our squad. But I’m struggling to come up with any credible alternative explanation.
promised land Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 Am I the only one who clicks on these endless threads and looks at how long it is, then doesn't read it. This one is the size of a small novel, when I've got a spare day I might come back to it but I guess it's more or less the same as all the others of late.
themightyfin Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 Got bored after 2 paragraphs It was a NOTHING game with nothing to play for playing a virtual reserve team! EVERY team who has qualified as group winners would have done the same. What would have happened/ what would you have said if we put our strongest team out and we picked up 2 or 3 injuries? And those that were a card away from missing the last 16 picked up a yellow? You would have been here slating him asking why he didn't put out a reserve team. Its a case of he's damned if he does and damned if he don't it seems with posters like yourself who have made your mind about CR and have very short memory's. The guy did what nobody else could deliver in over 100 years.
themightyfin Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 2 minutes ago, promised land said: Am I the only one who clicks on these endless threads and looks at how long it is, then doesn't read it. This one is the size of a small novel, when I've got a spare day I might come back to it but I guess it's more or less the same as all the others of late. Exactly the same but more dragged out moan moan moan moan moan would have summed up what he was saying.
norwichfox Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 1 minute ago, promised land said: Am I the only one who clicks on these endless threads and looks at how long it is, then doesn't read it. This one is the size of a small novel, when I've got a spare day I might come back to it but I guess it's more or less the same as all the others of late. No you're not the only one, it would take me a week and as half to write it and longer than an eternity to finish reading beyond the words "Christmas Season"
Marshall Cockney Fox Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 Basically Claudio doesn't know what he's doing and wanted others to acknowledge it as well.
yorkie1999 Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 What if we'd fielded a full strength side and still got hammered
oxtonfox Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 50 minutes ago, smudgerfox said: Dear smudgerfox, I think by the time we have read your intro then it's about as long as it would take the 9 planets in the solar system to realign or roughly the same time it takes the current Leicester team to get a shot on of off target from the start of the match... Groan ....
orangecity23 Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 One thing I'm tired of hearing about is how "we owed Copenhagen a competitive performance". Copenhagen had two opportunities to beat us and failed in both, and while we were rolling over for Porto, they were playing a Brugge team that also had nothing to play for, and were 2 goals up after 15 minutes. It's not like they were battling a difficult and determined opponent whilst Porto were handed an easy job, both teams got easy games against teams that couldn't be bothered, what could be fairer than that.
DANGEROUS TIGER Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 2 hours ago, smudgerfox said: The success of the gamble Claudio Ranieri made with his team selection for the Porto game will only become clear in the coming weeks. The Premier League fixture list now accelerates into the Christmas season, a season in which we rarely perform well, (in last season’s glory we managed four festive points from twelve).There will be precious little time for tactical rehearsal and confidence rebuild. Then 2017 brings another transfer window. The Porto surrender clearly demonstrated the need to reinforce a flagging squad and simultaneously made that reinforcement more difficult. Champions League football is usually a big draw for ambitious talent. But what will Leicester City be offering any new signing in January? One “glamour tie” with the aim of avoiding further humiliation in Europe’s premier sporting competition. Oh and a relegation dog fight added on. A win, a draw, even a narrow defeat in Portugal, would have maintained the fiction that fundamentally all is well at the club. That if Champions League form can be repeated on “bread and butter” days, the Premier points will start to mount up again. To not have seen the importance of retaining our Champions League “aura” in this way, is a catastrophic error on the part of our manager, and one which may ultimately cost him his job. The defeat, and particularly the nature of the defeat, has laid bare that Leicester’s Premier winning squad is paper thin with virtually no quality, match-ready replacements to call upon. That the squad is tactically inflexible, incapable of playing to more than one system, which even the most modest of opponents now know how to counter, a state of affairs to which Claudio has been unable to provide any effective response. That the infamous team spirit which produced so many improbable results last season, is as shattered as one of Jeffrey Schlupp’s sports cars on the hard shoulder. That, incredibly, after the events of last season, that some of the team would prefer not to be at the King Power, setting their sights on such glamorous settings as The Hawthorns. In short, Porto, has confirmed Leicester City as a club in crisis. A crisis which will require radical action to put right and action which our opponents will do everything in their power to frustrate. Take that January transfer window. Most supporters are concentrating on the players we need to add. But we may well spend January, as we did much of the summer: reading transfer speculation about Mahrez, Vardy, Schmeichel and Drinkwater. After last night, what do we have to keep them here? And even if they do stay, the speculation is likely to prove disruptive and unhelpful to signing new recruits. So, in Portugal, Ranieri sacrificed a fragile but nevertheless useful, appearance of calm normality at LCFC, exposing the club to the full glare of a media crisis investigation. That’s unlikely to be pretty. Nor helpful. He has also broken an important connection with the fans. Fielding a weakened, unmotivated and tactically unprepared side for an away Champions League match is hugely disrespectful to those who paid good money to support the team in Porto. Such a witless performance also showed a lack of awareness of our responsibility to the integrity of the competition. The claim of FC Copenhagen to a place in the last 16 demanded that we compete. We failed to do so. In that we also sacrificed the canny knack the club developed last season for “doing the right thing.” Our modest dignity was one of the reasons the club’s success was so widely popular last season. That seems to have gone now too. Yet Ranieri’s gamble was not quite as dramatic as is being widely reported. Yes there were ten changes. But up front we had Ahmed Musa who has Champions League appearances with CKSA Moscow to his name. Alongside, Okazaki – thus far this season’s brightest star. Maybe not a first choice striker combination but one that ought to be competitive. In midfield, Mendy and Drinkwater is probably the best central pairing we have. Many of us have been clamouring for Gray to start. Schlupp, normally, is solid with some forward threat, usually as a result of his pace. It’s not an unreasonable four. However, the back five, have never played as a unit before and it was their frailties which left us so badly exposed. A third choice keeper who’s been rejected in the past, at right back, a centre back with an established reputation for losing his marker. Plus Wasilewski, whose limitations are well documented and whose performance at the Emirates last February should have put an end to any prospect of a new contract. Not an ideal set-up in which to introduce a rookie left back. This defensive line-up was a disaster waiting to happen. Part of me thinks Claudio knew that. And I’m pretty certain the players knew it and felt they’d been hung out to dry, in full public view. Ranieri’s justification is puzzling. He wants to save the best players so they’re fresh for Man City. But Mahrez, Vardy, Slimani and Huth are all struggling for form and might have regained some confidence in a high profile match, in which there was little for Leicester to lose and the opposition needed to push for a win. Zieler would surely have benefitted from another 90 minutes with the first choice defence in front of him. The other explanation offered is that Claudio has players asking why they’re not being given a chance to play – so he gave them that chance. But is this the way to nurture Gray and Chilwell, to integrate Musa or to develop Hamer? To put them in a team with a bits-and-pieces defence, against a young, hungry talented team from an experienced European club, and tell them to get on with it? What in fact we may be witnessing is a fundamental disagreement between the coach and the recruitment side of the club. While a lot is said about Kante and Mahrez, rather less is said about Inler and Benalouane – both expensive signings who have barely kicked a ball in the City first team. These are players who both arrived with a good pedigree who Claudio seems to rate as simply not good enough. Musa was told on arrival he was not first-team ready, Kapustka has suffered the same fate. Presumably someone, somewhere, at some point, thought these players would add to the potency of our squad. The fact that the manager didn’t, doesn’t, is a cause for major concern. These underlying disagreements were largely hidden last season by the low injury and suspension rate and a more easily managed fixture list. Claudio was able to call upon a relatively small number of players, all of whom he trusted. But it is now a critical fault line at the heart of our club. Steve Walsh famously had to persuade Ranieri to sign Kante, Ranieri clearly wanted Gray after seeing him play in a pre-season friendly. I find it hard to believe that the captain of the Swiss national team was totally unsuitable for the Premiership. Zieler is demonstrably an inadequate replacement for the large presence of Schmeichel. It is not easy to determine whose judgement we should trust. What is apparent is that there is disagreement about which positions need strengthening (the lack of defensive reinforcement really was a crime last summer) and which players best meet those needs. And time ticks on to the heavy Christmas fixture programme, the January transfer window and beyond, to February and a last 16 tie in the Champions League. I don’t want to believe that Ranieri’s team selection for Porto was a deliberate act designed to illustrate to persons unknown, the lack of strength in depth in our squad. But I’m struggling to come up with any credible alternative explanation. Much as I appreciate the amount of time you spent on your post ((good for you), once it has been read and inwardly digested, the overall view of the aforesaid reader (namely me), has concluded that your articulation, is boring, and your reasoning, a load of old cobblers!
limeydale Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 I only need one word to sum that up- POPPYCOCK!!!!
VLC86 Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 What we definitely need is more people quoting said essay so when all we want to do is scroll to the bottom without reading it you have to scroll past it many times.
VLC86 Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 14 minutes ago, limeydale said: I only need one word to sum that up- POPPYCOCK!!!! That meant for the unusual meat thread?
funkyrobot Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 3 hours ago, smudgerfox said: The success of the gamble Claudio Ranieri made with his team selection for the Porto game will only become clear in the coming weeks. The Premier League fixture list now accelerates into the Christmas season, a season in which we rarely perform well, (in last season’s glory we managed four festive points from twelve).There will be precious little time for tactical rehearsal and confidence rebuild. Then 2017 brings another transfer window. The Porto surrender clearly demonstrated the need to reinforce a flagging squad and simultaneously made that reinforcement more difficult. Champions League football is usually a big draw for ambitious talent. But what will Leicester City be offering any new signing in January? One “glamour tie” with the aim of avoiding further humiliation in Europe’s premier sporting competition. Oh and a relegation dog fight added on. A win, a draw, even a narrow defeat in Portugal, would have maintained the fiction that fundamentally all is well at the club. That if Champions League form can be repeated on “bread and butter” days, the Premier points will start to mount up again. To not have seen the importance of retaining our Champions League “aura” in this way, is a catastrophic error on the part of our manager, and one which may ultimately cost him his job. The defeat, and particularly the nature of the defeat, has laid bare that Leicester’s Premier winning squad is paper thin with virtually no quality, match-ready replacements to call upon. That the squad is tactically inflexible, incapable of playing to more than one system, which even the most modest of opponents now know how to counter, a state of affairs to which Claudio has been unable to provide any effective response. That the infamous team spirit which produced so many improbable results last season, is as shattered as one of Jeffrey Schlupp’s sports cars on the hard shoulder. That, incredibly, after the events of last season, that some of the team would prefer not to be at the King Power, setting their sights on such glamorous settings as The Hawthorns. In short, Porto, has confirmed Leicester City as a club in crisis. A crisis which will require radical action to put right and action which our opponents will do everything in their power to frustrate. Take that January transfer window. Most supporters are concentrating on the players we need to add. But we may well spend January, as we did much of the summer: reading transfer speculation about Mahrez, Vardy, Schmeichel and Drinkwater. After last night, what do we have to keep them here? And even if they do stay, the speculation is likely to prove disruptive and unhelpful to signing new recruits. So, in Portugal, Ranieri sacrificed a fragile but nevertheless useful, appearance of calm normality at LCFC, exposing the club to the full glare of a media crisis investigation. That’s unlikely to be pretty. Nor helpful. He has also broken an important connection with the fans. Fielding a weakened, unmotivated and tactically unprepared side for an away Champions League match is hugely disrespectful to those who paid good money to support the team in Porto. Such a witless performance also showed a lack of awareness of our responsibility to the integrity of the competition. The claim of FC Copenhagen to a place in the last 16 demanded that we compete. We failed to do so. In that we also sacrificed the canny knack the club developed last season for “doing the right thing.” Our modest dignity was one of the reasons the club’s success was so widely popular last season. That seems to have gone now too. Yet Ranieri’s gamble was not quite as dramatic as is being widely reported. Yes there were ten changes. But up front we had Ahmed Musa who has Champions League appearances with CKSA Moscow to his name. Alongside, Okazaki – thus far this season’s brightest star. Maybe not a first choice striker combination but one that ought to be competitive. In midfield, Mendy and Drinkwater is probably the best central pairing we have. Many of us have been clamouring for Gray to start. Schlupp, normally, is solid with some forward threat, usually as a result of his pace. It’s not an unreasonable four. However, the back five, have never played as a unit before and it was their frailties which left us so badly exposed. A third choice keeper who’s been rejected in the past, at right back, a centre back with an established reputation for losing his marker. Plus Wasilewski, whose limitations are well documented and whose performance at the Emirates last February should have put an end to any prospect of a new contract. Not an ideal set-up in which to introduce a rookie left back. This defensive line-up was a disaster waiting to happen. Part of me thinks Claudio knew that. And I’m pretty certain the players knew it and felt they’d been hung out to dry, in full public view. Ranieri’s justification is puzzling. He wants to save the best players so they’re fresh for Man City. But Mahrez, Vardy, Slimani and Huth are all struggling for form and might have regained some confidence in a high profile match, in which there was little for Leicester to lose and the opposition needed to push for a win. Zieler would surely have benefitted from another 90 minutes with the first choice defence in front of him. The other explanation offered is that Claudio has players asking why they’re not being given a chance to play – so he gave them that chance. But is this the way to nurture Gray and Chilwell, to integrate Musa or to develop Hamer? To put them in a team with a bits-and-pieces defence, against a young, hungry talented team from an experienced European club, and tell them to get on with it? What in fact we may be witnessing is a fundamental disagreement between the coach and the recruitment side of the club. While a lot is said about Kante and Mahrez, rather less is said about Inler and Benalouane – both expensive signings who have barely kicked a ball in the City first team. These are players who both arrived with a good pedigree who Claudio seems to rate as simply not good enough. Musa was told on arrival he was not first-team ready, Kapustka has suffered the same fate. Presumably someone, somewhere, at some point, thought these players would add to the potency of our squad. The fact that the manager didn’t, doesn’t, is a cause for major concern. These underlying disagreements were largely hidden last season by the low injury and suspension rate and a more easily managed fixture list. Claudio was able to call upon a relatively small number of players, all of whom he trusted. But it is now a critical fault line at the heart of our club. Steve Walsh famously had to persuade Ranieri to sign Kante, Ranieri clearly wanted Gray after seeing him play in a pre-season friendly. I find it hard to believe that the captain of the Swiss national team was totally unsuitable for the Premiership. Zieler is demonstrably an inadequate replacement for the large presence of Schmeichel. It is not easy to determine whose judgement we should trust. What is apparent is that there is disagreement about which positions need strengthening (the lack of defensive reinforcement really was a crime last summer) and which players best meet those needs. And time ticks on to the heavy Christmas fixture programme, the January transfer window and beyond, to February and a last 16 tie in the Champions League. I don’t want to believe that Ranieri’s team selection for Porto was a deliberate act designed to illustrate to persons unknown, the lack of strength in depth in our squad. But I’m struggling to come up with any credible alternative explanation. 15 minutes ago, Costock_Fox said: What we definitely need is more people quoting said essay so when all we want to do is scroll to the bottom without reading it you have to scroll past it many times. Happy to oblige costock...
VLC86 Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 5 minutes ago, funkyrobot said: Happy to oblige costock... You are too kind sir.
Wymsey Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 Wondered where Thracian was after not seeing him post for a while.
leicesterlad1989 Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 Can someone please summarise? Anything that long needs to be broken up by pictures.
ZeGuy Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 17 hours ago, smudgerfox said: The success of the gamble Claudio Ranieri made with his team selection for the Porto game will only become clear in the coming weeks. The Premier League fixture list now accelerates into the Christmas season, a season in which we rarely perform well, (in last season’s glory we managed four festive points from twelve).There will be precious little time for tactical rehearsal and confidence rebuild. Then 2017 brings another transfer window. The Porto surrender clearly demonstrated the need to reinforce a flagging squad and simultaneously made that reinforcement more difficult. Champions League football is usually a big draw for ambitious talent. But what will Leicester City be offering any new signing in January? One “glamour tie” with the aim of avoiding further humiliation in Europe’s premier sporting competition. Oh and a relegation dog fight added on. A win, a draw, even a narrow defeat in Portugal, would have maintained the fiction that fundamentally all is well at the club. That if Champions League form can be repeated on “bread and butter” days, the Premier points will start to mount up again. To not have seen the importance of retaining our Champions League “aura” in this way, is a catastrophic error on the part of our manager, and one which may ultimately cost him his job. [...] You lost me there. Unless one comes from Mars or at least doesn't follow the PL at all, there is no way even the least informed observer would think everything is well in the club. This was a nothing game and imo CR did right to play the fringes. No suspension or injury risk, rest the core of the team for the big game at saturday. That's what any sane coach would do in this case. Too bad they let him down.
uragomper Posted 9 December 2016 Posted 9 December 2016 2 hours ago, DANGEROUS TIGER said: Much as I appreciate the amount of time you spent on your post ((good for you), once it has been read and inwardly digested, the overall view of the aforesaid reader (namely me), has concluded that your articulation, is boring, and your reasoning, a load of old cobblers! 3 minutes ago, ZeGuy said: You lost me there. Unless one comes from Mars or at least doesn't follow the PL at all, there is no way even the least informed observer would think everything is well in the club. Nothing can be we This was a nothing game and imo CR did right to play the fringes. No suspension or injury risk, rest the core of the team for the big game at saturday. That's what any sane coach would do in this case. Too bad they let him down. How do you explain all the other crap games with the 1st team. Writing is on the wall the next 2 games will explain half of the fans self-denial.
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