Concerned with the backlog in midfield?

[GingerrrFox]

It could just be me but I'm a bit concerned with our central midfield. They are all essentially the same player, holding midfielders who don't look to get forward and are not particularly creative.

 

Yesterday Drinky was forced into a position he quite clearly wasn't comfortable/happy to play and his frustration was apparent. Mendy has spent his whole career playing as the anchor man in a 3 man midfield and has played well so far but yesterday there were times he and Ndidi were occupying the same positions and getting in each other's way. 

 

Ndidi looks like he could be anything and can see why we were interested in him as he is obviously a good player, but did we really need him? The similarities between him and Amartey are obvious they are essentially a Nigerian/Ghanian copy of each other. Add in Kingy and he is not the goal scoring, attacking box to box midfielder that he used to be, and as he has got older he has become far more "safe" and just keeps the game ticking over from deep. 

 

Drinkwater

Ndidi

Mendy

Amartey

King

 

The only player that is different is Matty James, before the knee injury he was genuine box to box, and was the perfect foil to the deep midfielder, as shown with his partnership with Drinky in the Championship and then Cambiasso in the Prem. However is he the same player he was before the injury? Claudio clearly doesn't fancy him so we may never find out?

 

it just leaves me concerned that there is no flexibility in our options. I don't think the players we have can play in a 3. If you look at successful 3 man midfields in history, there is the anchor man (Makele), box to box (Essien) and creative goal scoring playmaker (Lampard).

 

Maybe with a 4-3-1-2 and a player such as Mahrez/Gray/Kapustka/Lawrence/Barnes in front of them in a "10 role" it could work but yesterday left me concerned that we are very one dimensional in the middle of the park. 

[Fox92]

We have no creativity and nobody that scores from midfield. Gray being in and out of the side sums us up, he'll probably get bored and leave soon.

 

Yet again Lawrence scoring from long range for Ipswich yesterday.... if only we had a midfielder that could do that.

[Guest Col city fan]

This is not rocket science, I and others have been saying it all season. Drinkwater CAN play a bit of football (ie as a playmaker) but that's not his real strength.

Just compare our midfield with Chelsea's (yes, I know they are world class, money etc)... all three of Pedro, Hazard and Willian keep the ball, run with it, pass it quickly, can score goals out of nothing etc etc. all underpinned by Matic and Kante. I thought Matic was exceptional yesterday by the way.

Compare that to ours....Ndidi (young, inexperienced), Amartey (just a stopper), Mendy (just a stopper), King (pops up with the odd goal but goes missing) and Drinkwater (still looks knackered) and you can see the huge gulf in creative quality between the two sides.

But I've said this from the start of the season, been ridiculed for it and been banned for going on about it (especially about Amartey of course).

But it's all true.

Why on earth we signed both Musa and Slim, when we already had Ulloa, Shinji, Vardy and even Schlupp who can play as a striker, AND THEN NOT SIGN ANYBODY TO CREATE CHANCES FOR THEM, is beyond strange.

I don't know...,maybe we tried...maybe not hard enough, who knows.

I just think we've done so many things wrong this season when we could have done so many things right. Really disappointing.

[lcfcsnow]

26 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

all three of Pedro, Hazard and Willian keep the ball, run with it, pass it quickly, can score goals out of nothing etc etc.

And our front three appeared to be a Drinkwater out of position, Musa a pure paceman that when he actually keeps hold of the ball I'm sure it's by accident and Vardy another paceman that seems to be waiting on a through ball this season. So we have nobody to create in the front three, who's behind them in midfield to create? Mendy defensive midfielder. Ndidi defensive midfielder. Chilwell left back out of position. Albrighton tries his best but can barely keep the ball in play. I'm not sure what Ranieri is trying to achieve at the moment.

[DelBoy73]

16 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

This is not rocket science, I and others have been saying it all season. Drinkwater CAN play a bit of football (ie as a playmaker) but that's not his real strength.

Just compare our midfield with Chelsea's (yes, I know they are world class, money etc)... all three of Pedro, Hazard and Willian keep the ball, run with it, pass it quickly, can score goals out of nothing etc etc. all underpinned by Matic and Kante. I thought Matic was exceptional yesterday by the way.

Compare that to ours....Ndidi (young, inexperienced), Amartey (just a stopper), Mendy (just a stopper), King (pops up with the odd goal but goes missing) and Drinkwater (still looks knackered) and you can see the huge gulf in creative quality between the two sides.

But I've said this from the start of the season, been ridiculed for it and been banned for going on about it (especially about Amartey of course).

But it's all true.

Why on earth we signed both Musa and Slim, when we already had Ulloa, Shinji, Vardy and even Schlupp who can play as a striker, AND THEN NOT SIGN ANYBODY TO CREATE CHANCES FOR THEM, is beyond strange.

I don't know...,maybe we tried...maybe not hard enough, who knows.

I just think we've done so many things wrong this season when we could have done so many things right. Really disappointing.

I hear you mate. I also have been yelling that since .... the august pre-season friendlies.

First, i thought it was a tactical trick from CR to hide his real plans and unfold a new system when the season begins.

But now i know that the truth is : CR knows as much as us that he made a major ****-up by signing new strikers without creative midfielders to feed them.

This is why we resort to hoofing it up, that is the only way our weak midfield bone can bring the ball in threatening positions, period.

And the worst part is we lost momentum.

Last transfer window, as fresh reigning champions we could have attracted many top quality creative midfielders ( be it CM/CAM or DM ).

But now, who would be stupid enough to sign with us and fancy a relegation battle, as that will be the most realistic ambition you could claim with

our aging center backs and bellow average midfield we have ?

 

[foxes21]

this is why I've been against 3 in the middle all season. Unless we have two genuine box to box cm's or at least one creative cm, 3 in the middle will not work. We don't have the players for it!!!

[Kinowe Soorie]

25 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

This is not rocket science, I and others have been saying it all season. Drinkwater CAN play a bit of football (ie as a playmaker) but that's not his real strength.

Just compare our midfield with Chelsea's (yes, I know they are world class, money etc)... all three of Pedro, Hazard and Willian keep the ball, run with it, pass it quickly, can score goals out of nothing etc etc. all underpinned by Matic and Kante. I thought Matic was exceptional yesterday by the way.

Compare that to ours....Ndidi (young, inexperienced), Amartey (just a stopper), Mendy (just a stopper), King (pops up with the odd goal but goes missing) and Drinkwater (still looks knackered) and you can see the huge gulf in creative quality between the two sides.

But I've said this from the start of the season, been ridiculed for it and been banned for going on about it (especially about Amartey of course).

But it's all true.

Why on earth we signed both Musa and Slim, when we already had Ulloa, Shinji, Vardy and even Schlupp who can play as a striker, AND THEN NOT SIGN ANYBODY TO CREATE CHANCES FOR THEM, is beyond strange.

I don't know...,maybe we tried...maybe not hard enough, who knows.

I just think we've done so many things wrong this season when we could have done so many things right. Really disappointing.

I was very impressed with Matić, composed, passer, made time for himself. Class act.

[pazzerfox]

1 hour ago, Col city fan said:

This is not rocket science, I and others have been saying it all season. Drinkwater CAN play a bit of football (ie as a playmaker) but that's not his real strength.

Just compare our midfield with Chelsea's (yes, I know they are world class, money etc)... all three of Pedro, Hazard and Willian keep the ball, run with it, pass it quickly, can score goals out of nothing etc etc. all underpinned by Matic and Kante. I thought Matic was exceptional yesterday by the way.

Compare that to ours....Ndidi (young, inexperienced), Amartey (just a stopper), Mendy (just a stopper), King (pops up with the odd goal but goes missing) and Drinkwater (still looks knackered) and you can see the huge gulf in creative quality between the two sides.

But I've said this from the start of the season, been ridiculed for it and been banned for going on about it (especially about Amartey of course).

But it's all true.

Why on earth we signed both Musa and Slim, when we already had Ulloa, Shinji, Vardy and even Schlupp who can play as a striker, AND THEN NOT SIGN ANYBODY TO CREATE CHANCES FOR THEM, is beyond strange.

I don't know...,maybe we tried...maybe not hard enough, who knows.

I just think we've done so many things wrong this season when we could have done so many things right. Really disappointing.

Probably your best post ever Col....Well done.

[Guest MattP]

Agree with this, they all seem to do the same job.

 

Although a bit more concerned that despite a midfield three yesterday they seemed to totally dominate, maybe that's because Matic and Kante are so good though. 

[yorkie1999]

We're over defensive, whether or not that's the players choice is another matter but it's going to fvck us up big time, every team knows all they have to do is stick their defence up towards the half way line and we'll sit back and just lump the ball back to them. Yesterday vardy spent as much time in our half of the centre circle as he did in their half, Cahill and luiz, who are about as good with the ball as our cb's must have been pissing themselves laughing at how much time we gave them

[iancognito]

2 hours ago, Fox92 said:

We have no creativity and nobody that scores from midfield. Gray being in and out of the side sums us up, he'll probably get bored and leave soon.

 

Yet again Lawrence scoring from long range for Ipswich yesterday.... if only we had a midfielder that could do that.

King vs Man City for instance? They can all have a crack from long range, they spend the last ten mins of the warm up doing just that but the problem is none of them get anywhere near the edge of the box to have a shot, even when the ball gets to one of our strikers the midfielders are all 30 yards back down the pitch. This is why we need a Ramirez or Sigurdsson coming in who won't be bogged down in the centre circle.

[Fox92]

3 minutes ago, iancognito said:

King vs Man City for instance? They can all have a crack from long range, they spend the last ten mins of the warm up doing just that but the problem is none of them get anywhere near the edge of the box to have a shot, even when the ball gets to one of our strikers the midfielders are all 30 yards back down the pitch. This is why we need a Ramirez or Sigurdsson coming in who won't be bogged down in the centre circle.

Because the midfielders are too far away from Vardy. Every second ball drops to an opposition player. King, as you rightly pointed out, scored against Manchester City but we don't have a midfielder that drives with the ball from deep and shoots (we haven't had that since Izzet). That is my point about Lawrence, watching highlights of him during the past month, at least it looks like he does that.

 

 As pointed out in this thread, our midfielders seem to be the same type of player. 

[Fox92]

29 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

We're over defensive, whether or not that's the players choice is another matter but it's going to fvck us up big time, every team knows all they have to do is stick their defence up towards the half way line and we'll sit back and just lump the ball back to them. Yesterday vardy spent as much time in our half of the centre circle as he did in their half, Cahill and luiz, who are about as good with the ball as our cb's must have been pissing themselves laughing at how much time we gave them

Cahill and Luiz won't have an easier game all season.

 

I can accept being defensive if we didn't concede but we concede too many goals - easy goals - we played a different formation yesterday, I presume to stop their threat but they scored within 5 minutes. Shocking we are.

[fazzyfox]

Like buses we desperately needed a Mendy or Ndidi between September and December and now we have both.

I had wondered which of those and Drinky would be left out vs Chelsea only to see all three and although it's early days to see exactly what type Ndidi is they certainly did look to be trying to carry out the same roles.

 

The beauty of the Drinky / James partnership was as modern day midfielders they each had an overlap of each others specialties ie Drinky could bomb forward better than most holding players and James could work back better than most attacking midfielders so one could break and the other cover whereas yesterdays trio didn't look look reaching the grass on the edge of the Chelsea box. If only James could finish as well as Kingy it would be the ideal pair. As we know Kante did more than win the ball but he really is an exception to the rule being the often referred to two players in one. So do we play three to compensate for no Kante? If we do, one needs to be an attacking threat like Mahrez.

 

I disagreed with the plan of matching Chelsea's formation, we needed to occupy their wing backs more by playing wingers to pin them back and try to draw out Cahill and Luiz who are accidents waiting to happen. The three cenre halves with wing backs used in the great escape worked and it was without Kante (albeit with a class act in Cambiasso) so I don't fear that it can't work for us again but the balance didn't look right yesterday.

[foxes21]

Some good posts about James. Maybe its time he's given a chance? He used to get forward very well & in the recent training pictures he looked in good shape.

Mendy and Ndidi occupy the same position so let them compete for CDM, with one of them sitting behind a Drinkwater/James partnership?

 

 

 

[adam95581]

I think whether this is an

issue or not depends on what formation we're going to play in future. If we're going to carry on with 2 in the middle then we need two workers (Drinks/Kante last season - potentially Drinks/Ndidi this season?) but if we're going to play 3 in the middle then we need to invest in a genuine no. 10.

 

Oki is great at what he does but he doesn't have the class of the likes of Sigurdson, Mirallas, Bojan etc. who all play the No.10 role in mid-lower league teams. If we're going to play a 3 then we could afford to have a luxury player who's not as capable defensively. 

[kingpower]

We were crowned Premier League Champions last season and we're here today actually discussing bringing Matty James back into the midfield *sighs* aren't we the best ever example of a team who should be moving forward and a real attractive proposition for top talent but instead showing how far we've regressed. It's massively disappointing 

[chicagofox]

Mendy and Ndidi holding - Albrighton Mahrez Gray - Slimani up-front.

 

Its not rocket science.  This is a very well balanced front-six.  With one (ideally two) new centre-half with pace, and Chilwell and Simpson at full-back, that is a very decent looking team.

 

Our best 11 does not include Matty James or Tom Lawrence.  And it also doesn't include Danny Drinkwater or Jamie Vardy.  My preferred 11 is harsh on Daniel Amartey but you can't play everyone.

[desertfox2]

Still not convinced we have 2 top class CM's let alone 3.

 

Ndidi and Mendy have looked good but still

early days. Kaputska who knows but doesn't seem Ranieri thinks he's the answer.

 

All good sides have goals coming from midfield aside from Mahrez who has been poor anyway who do we have that will score goals from midfield consistently just don't see it. Love Drinkwater but I'm not convinced he's suited to play in front of 2 deeper lying midfielders in a 3. He doesn't score enough to play that role. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying drop him I'm thinking Ndidi or Mendy. Drinkwater and someone more like a sigurdsson (who by the way must see the writing on the wall at Swansea) if we play 3 in the middle.

 

Gray like others have said could well get fed up and want out soon.

 

We need a playmaker in the middle and at least 1 CB. Just hope we get some quality in this window.

 

Need the don to pull a couple of rabbits out the hat in the next 2 weeks. So far lets face it summer and this window our recruitment

has been underwhelming.

[steflcfc]

We do look to have signed players with similar attributes for the CM role.

Mendy, Drinkwater, Ndidi, Amartey all want to sit and harass, win the ball back play a 5/10 yard pass job done for the position they play.

 

I don't class any of them as attacking central midfielders, yes its early days for a few of them, but I haven't seen anything to suggest they can create anything for our forwards on a regular basis.

I thought Drinkwater would have taken that role out of the choices we have, but it doesn't seem like he wants to take that responsibility.

This is why we are really struggling to score, Stop Mahrez and you stop us creating anything.

The only other player we have with a bit of flair on the ball and are prepared to run at players is Grey, but he is being used sporadically.

You know its bad when we are either relying on an Albrighton cross from anywhere in the oppositions 45 or a Fuchs throw-in.

 

We have dropped some clangers in the summer and in this window with not fixing some glaringly obvious positions in the squad.

So lightweight at the back the defence don't have to be concerned about a poor performance as they have no one pushing them for a recall.

A disjointed midfield still getting to grips with each others roles and chopping and changing of personnel.

 

There are some big decisions to be made for the shape of the squad whilst the Transfer window is still open, as this "togetherness" and "band of brothers" now seems a distant memory, as we look a completely different team that 20 odd games in the league, it still looks like we are finding our feet and is struggling to find a system that now works to the best of our abilities, as we don't have a settled 11.

 

Luckily there do seem to be a few teams with bigger problems than us, but we do need to get some points on the board and pull away from the relegation zone as once the CL is back, players attentions for the league will be like they were in the group state...non existant.

 

Hopefully soon things begin to gel, and the structure of our starting 11 will start to take place now we have no injuries,

What formation or players will feature is anyone's guess.

I just hope we start to impose our game on other teams, rather than firstly  going out trying to stop theirs as its having such a negative effect on our play

[Lionheart10]

7 hours ago, Col city fan said:

This is not rocket science, I and others have been saying it all season. Drinkwater CAN play a bit of football (ie as a playmaker) but that's not his real strength.

Just compare our midfield with Chelsea's (yes, I know they are world class, money etc)... all three of Pedro, Hazard and Willian keep the ball, run with it, pass it quickly, can score goals out of nothing etc etc. all underpinned by Matic and Kante. I thought Matic was exceptional yesterday by the way.

Compare that to ours....Ndidi (young, inexperienced), Amartey (just a stopper), Mendy (just a stopper), King (pops up with the odd goal but goes missing) and Drinkwater (still looks knackered) and you can see the huge gulf in creative quality between the two sides.

But I've said this from the start of the season, been ridiculed for it and been banned for going on about it (especially about Amartey of course).

But it's all true.

Why on earth we signed both Musa and Slim, when we already had Ulloa, Shinji, Vardy and even Schlupp who can play as a striker, AND THEN NOT SIGN ANYBODY TO CREATE CHANCES FOR THEM, is beyond strange.

I don't know...,maybe we tried...maybe not hard enough, who knows.

I just think we've done so many things wrong this season when we could have done so many things right. Really disappointing.

This is a good post mate,the only thing that lets you down is suggesting that Schlupp could play as a striker!!

[Trav Le Bleu]

5 hours ago, MattP said:

maybe that's because Matic and Kante are so good though. 

There's no maybe about it.

[Livid]

I don't know if it's by design but we have no one in the centre who drives forward, it's all about getting out wide as soon as possible. 

 

I think we've all been preoccupied trying to find a Kante replacement just assuming Drinkwater would do the job.

[fleckneymike]

We, like many sides, need a midfielder who can carry the ball forward.

 

Kante, as well as breaking up attacks, used to set up attacks by driving forward with the ball. Drinkwater will push forward - but only in the oppositions final third; this means we struggle to get attacks started or even support them.

 

Mahrez, whilst out of sorts at times, is the only player in the squad who looks to carry the ball. All too often long aimless balls into the channels becomes our default. Mendy is a very tidy player but on numerous occasions yesterday he was either unwilling or unable to take the ball on, Schmeichel could be seen remonstrating with the midfield over their reluctance to travel with the ball, this only serves to slow our play down and make us a less potent attacking force.

 

Albrighton can only cross (albeit somewhat erratically), and I mean that literally. If you watch his tackles they are actually hit as though they are crosses. If you watch his clearances they too are hit like crosses. His passes are hit like crosses as are his shots. He is like watching a game of FIFA or PES where the player has only one functioning button.