The "do they mean us?" thread pt 2

[PhillippaT]

On 18/11/2020 at 18:25, Fox in the North said:

Love these photos of both stadiums close together. Can’t wait for another photo like this once the stadium expansion is done. 

 

Still sad to see the filbert street outline mind you 

Are they ever going to fully redevelop that area, or not?  

[Ric Flair]

4 hours ago, TK95 said:

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/12134739/premier-league-predictions-jose-mourinho-and-tottenham-can-master-declining-manchester-city

 

Sky's predictions make for an interesting reading 

 

"A gulf in class" 

Any statto's out there able to work out how many shots from open play we had vs Man City and Arsenal away and Wolves at home last season? I'm not overly concerned by this stat right now, we've shut up shop against teams we have been notoriously poor against over the years and the penalties we have got (almost all of them valid even after relying on VAR) have in some cases allowed us to get a stranglehold on games and then shut the game down for the win.

 

I'd expect us to push harder in attack if and when we need to and against weaker opposition that we are going to face over the coming weeks. We have been exceptional away from home and only played once at home in the league since the West Ham and Villa debacles, I think these stats on paper look a concern but having watched our games and consider past performances against the same or similar teams and our need to play a certain way due to a lot of injuries (most of which are about to return) then there's plenty of caveats to put on this.

 

I'll be more than happy if we register 5 open play shots on Sunday, that'll probably means we'll have scored at least twice and throw another peno in for good measure 😂

[Aus Fox]

17 hours ago, Ted Maul said:

 

What a goal- amazing that it wasn't even the best one we scored that night. 

 

His army of supporters don't seem to be too pleased with Man City and Pep in the comments, glad we got rid of them 

I do miss Mahrez’s brilliance, such A great player.

[StanSP]

A story we all know but can happily reflect on.. Good thread! 

 

 

[OntarioFox]

20 hours ago, brucey said:

This in the comments  Which club is going to come along and #FreeMahrez?

 

The funny thing is, that chant doesn't even rhyme if they're speaking French. 

 

Algerian fans really are the weirdest bunch on the planet, but I guess there's not that much else going for them except a history of pretty unpleasant oppression by Charles De Gaulle and being where France tested their nukes. Which probably explains the weird dual-language chant - you know how annoyed the French get by others butchering their language. 

Edited 20 November 2020 by OntarioFox

[easilee]

I refuse to pay my license fee until this brudda is employed by BBC

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKtRrdZYwHk

Edited 20 November 2020 by easilee

[HybridFox]

1 hour ago, easilee said:

I refuse to pay my license fee until this brudda is employed by BBC

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKtRrdZYwHk

He needs to be the new voice of Siri 

[Webbo]

'I want people talking about me again': James Maddison on his burning desire to be Leicester and England's main man, the Foxes' current Premier League title tilt... and THAT casino visit

Quote

 

James Maddison's football-mad family will be glued to their screens when the Premier League leaders take on the champions on Sunday night. There is just one problem: the Leicester star’s mother, Una, is a Liverpool fan.

Maddison’s parents were at Anfield for this fixture last season, when their son scored the equaliser but Liverpool claimed a 2-1 victory with a controversial stoppage-time penalty.

‘She’ll be watching the game closely and I’ll be making sure that she’s supporting Leicester and not Liverpool,’ smiles Maddison, as he speaks to Sportsmail over Zoom from Leicester’s Belvoir Drive training ground. 

 

‘I always take the mick out of her and tell her she is just a glory hunter, but she and my Auntie Catherine are big Liverpool fans and have been for years. I’ve seen pictures of them when they were younger in Liverpool tops so she’s not just one of those fake ones who’s jumped on the bandwagon. 

‘I try to keep her in line about it. She was in one of the boxes at Anfield last year when I scored and that was a great moment for her, she got a bit emotional. But I didn’t hear about her reaction when they scored the winner in the 91st minute! She might have jumped up for that one, who knows? She acted disappointed in the car on the way home, but I’m not so sure.’

Maddison talks as he plays — bold, engaging and with a perceptible swagger. He wants to be the main man and he sees no reason to hide it, hence his disappointment at missing out on the most recent England squad and his certainty that ‘there is a gap for me’ in the national side.

One example is instructive: instead of delegating his social media activity to a management company, as many sports stars do, Maddison likes to get stuck in, whether it is promising signed shirts or boots for fans, or trading jibes with Jeremy Clarkson. The TV personality said on Twitter that Maddison spends too much time styling his hair; Maddison replied by telling Clarkson that he should be so lucky.

‘I won’t be employing a PR company any time soon,’ he reflects. ‘I am James Maddison — I don’t want someone else to be James Maddison for me.

 

‘I watch interviews with other people in sport and they’re so scripted and boring, just the same thing. That’s OK as everyone is different, but I want to showcase who I am, whether you meet me on the street, come to the training ground or watch me play. The manager always talks about playing with personality and I love being fouled, and being booed by opposing fans. That’s just me, so when I saw the Clarkson tweet, I thought I’d have a go back.

‘He doesn’t get a free hit just because he’s not a footballer. It was all good fun and clean-hearted. I never heard back from him, so I’ll take the victory on that one.’

Yet accompanying Maddison’s self-confidence is a ferocious dedication to football and a childlike enthusiasm for the sport. Before our interview, Maddison — who turns 24 on Monday — marvels at a clip of Diego Maradona working his magic on a Napoli training pitch that resembles a paddy field. He describes himself as a ‘student of the game’ and rarely misses a televised match when he isn’t playing.

During the spring lockdown, Maddison returned to the family home in Coventry and when the Bundesliga became the first major European league to restart after the shutdown, he and his father Gary devoured every game. He did ‘keepy-uppy against the wall’ and played games against his younger brother, Ben, in the garden, taking great care to avoid his X-rated sliding tackles.

 

None of this, though, was any substitute for playing. The suspension of football, plus a hip injury that required surgery, meant Maddison started only five league games between March 9 and November 8. For a man who loves the limelight as much as he loves his job, there have been difficult days.

‘I play football because I love it,’ he says. ‘When you’re a young kid, you don’t see the end of the journey where the fame, the money, the contracts and the agents come into it.

‘Some people will lose that love but I never will. I love training, I love discussing the game, I love listening to the manager (Brendan Rodgers), the tactical side, learning and improving.

‘I don’t just come in and pick up my money. I go home and watch all the games that are on TV, in the Premier League and the Championship.

‘So when you’re injured there are dark days. You question yourself and, when you’re not as sharp as you want to be in those early sessions, you get frustrated. You sit in the changing room, just desperate to get back to your best level. What if I don’t come back the same player?

 

‘Then you are forgotten about a little bit, other players are talked about (more than you) and you get pushed to the side. I like putting pressure on myself, I like to be the one people are talking about and analysing — almost like they have a ‘Player Cam’ on me.

‘I like to be the main player and I want people talking about James Maddison again. In the last few weeks I’ve felt as sharp as I have for a year and hopefully that can continue in the Premier League and in Europe.’

Leicester’s poor second half of last season, when they lost a place in the Champions League on the final day despite spending most of the campaign in the top four, left many to question how they would perform this term — even though finishing fifth was still an impressive achievement.

There has been no sign of a hangover during the early weeks, as Rodgers’ men have claimed 18 points from a possible 24 — including wins at Manchester City and Arsenal — to move to the summit, as well as maximum points from their opening three Europa League games.

Maddison attributes their flying start to a meeting the squad and staff held at The Grove hotel in Hertfordshire in the off-season, when Rodgers split them into groups of four and five to review the 2019-20 campaign and suggest how they might do even better this time.

Maddison was in a group with Marc Albrighton, goalkeeping coach Mike Stowell and two members of the Under 23 squad.

 

He then had to deliver a presentation that lasted ‘about 50 minutes’ to the rest of the group, and hopes it is the starting point for a season to rival Leicester’s Premier League title campaign of 2015-16, which Maddison labels ‘the biggest underdog achievement in sporting history’.

‘When you’re at the training ground, the whole place reminds you of (the title win),’ he explains. ‘I’m very close to Marc Albrighton, and he and all the other title winners talk about it with such fond memories. I was at Coventry at the time and I was sure Leicester would fall away, so much so that I refused to put any of them in my fantasy team.

‘They all have replica Premier League trophies at home and I’m jealous of that. It’s the biggest you can achieve and the one I really want to win. Hopefully I can join the club one day.

‘I have a trophy cabinet at home and there are quite a few in there, but they are all individual trophies. There are not enough with massive handles, which is what it’s all about. I believe we have the tools to challenge for those titles.

‘That meeting helped us put last season behind us. The manager always talks about mentality and that has changed.

 

When we go into big games now, we think, “We’re going to win this”. I don’t see why we can’t go to Liverpool and play like we did at City and Arsenal.’

Success at club level should bring international recognition, too. Yet so far Maddison’s senior England action has been restricted to 34 minutes as a substitute against Montenegro a year ago.

Speaking for the first time about his visit to a casino in October 2019, after he had been sent home by England due to illness, Maddison rejects the idea that it may influence Gareth Southgate’s thinking today.

‘That was nothing,’ he stresses. ‘I was withdrawn from the squad because I was ill and a couple of days later I felt better.

‘I went and watched the game and had a game of cards because that’s a hobby of mine and it was magnified to a level it should never have been. I was picked in the next squad and I made my debut.

 

‘You have to be careful, especially with social media and camera phones, but whether I’m picked for England will purely be about football reasons.

‘I watch England now and I know there’s a gap for me. I know I can go and make an impact on the international stage; it’s just about being patient.

‘I’ve had a taste and I want more. Look at Jack Grealish — before the Belgium game he had never made a competitive start, and then he was the best player on the pitch.

‘It’s about taking that chance and I know I’m capable. Hopefully it will come around soon.’

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8970949/James-Maddison-desperate-main-man-Leicester-England.html

[Spudulike]

First time that I've seen a caption on BBC listing Oadby Town. Football Focus feature on Che Adams. 

 

He's one of our own. 

[Out Foxed]

42 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

First time that I've seen a caption on BBC listing Oadby Town. Football Focus feature on Che Adams. 

 

He's one of our own. 

as an oadbeh lad. was nice to see. 

[Buce]

 

Brendan Rodgers

Brendan Rodgers’ Anfield past brings power of ignition to latest reunion

 

t was unbelievable. It was pure football power destruction.” It is an oddity of the calendar that Leicester’s trip to Anfield on Sunday night will break a spell of 11 months since these two Premier League teams last met. No ordinary 11 months, either. Take a look at the highlights from the King Power Stadium, Boxing Day 2019, and it starts to look like something else, a last dance before the end times.

 

Liverpool had been enthroned as Club World Cup champions. Five days after beating Flamengo 1-0 in Doha, they walked out at a boisterously postprandial King Power and produced the defining performance of their title season: a ruthless, high-throttle 4-0 evisceration of opponents who had, until that point, been pushing them at the top of the table.

In the new Liverpool film End of the Storm this is the moment that makes Jürgen Klopp mist over. It still looks like a kind of summit point, an acme of Klopp-era Liverpool, with every working part in sync. By the time Trent Alexander-Arnold had eased forward to score the fourth goal there was a feeling of something other than a sporting contest taking place – a power play, an exhibition.

A festive crowd cooed and gurgled. The Liverpool players lingered to applaud the away end. Even the home fans seemed to stream out with an admiring shrug at such controlled destruction.

 

Five days later, the Chinese government recognised the spread of a new flu-like disease in the city of Wuhan. Within three months the season, the working world and indeed life for the foreseeable future had all been decisively disrupted. Leicester versus Liverpool: never such innocence again. Or at least, not yet anyway.

Liverpool had reached a point of ignition, springboard for a 10-match winning run that devastated the rest of the field. For Leicester this was a moment of traction the other way. From 14 points clear of Manchester United on Boxing Day, they ended up four points behind and clinging on to a European spot.

The bounce back this season – top of the table, six straight wins – has been equally notable, if not exactly a surprise given the buoyancy of this team and of their manager. This is the other notable feature of Liverpool versus Leicester: the man in the blue corner.

Leicester’s progress under Brendan Rodgers in the past 18 months is confirmation of something that perhaps needed restating in the Premier League. Rodgers remains a genuinely high-class manager, and a relatively young one at 47. He is also a curious figure in Liverpool’s modern history.

Here is that rare thing, a trophy-less manager, “mutually consented” from the job, who can still claim a degree of authorship in the success that followed. Rodgers is in no realistic sense the father, or the grandfather or even the uncle to the Klopp supremacy. But he is perhaps a fond second cousin.

Rodgers at Liverpool: it is still hard to get a clear look at this, an era that seems to escape easy categorisation. One reason is the entropy of the final months, a deathly end-game that culminated in a souring of internal relations with the nadir of a grisly 6-1 defeat at Stoke in May 2015.

 

This was how Rodgers unravelled at Liverpool. Some get nasty, some get mad. Rodgers seemed to go further into himself, to get lost in his own persona. But looking back – and for all the online scorn, the cringeworthy TV documentary snippets – there was a coherence to his actions, to his relationship to the club since and to what he left behind.

It is notable that the defining team of his time at Liverpool disappeared fairly quickly. Jordan Henderson is the only regular from that title-chasing vintage still in the front rank six years on – and Rodgers was initially sceptical about him, trying at one stage to offload Liverpool’s future captain to Fulham.

But the Rodgers era also coincided with a return to basic good husbandry. For a while the most obvious sign was the sheer volume of players exiting the club, among them Paul Konchesky, Christian Poulsen, Alberto Aquilani, Charlie Adam, Joe Cole, Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing.

Rodgers finessed a way of playing, a sense of urgency, a gloss – so important to the club – that what is happening has significance and must meet certain basic standards of modernity and competence.

Plus he produced a team to live up to those ideals during his most memorable season. There are some who will always credit Luis Suárez with the title challenge, just as some will see only the more theatrical elements of the Rogers persona, the Shankly-lite schtick, the air of David Brent-like

 

This is to oversimplify: Rodgers saw what was there and enabled it, hitched his team to that rare attacking talent. And what a time it was. At around the same stage as Klopp’s defining 4-0 at Leicester, Rodgers’s Liverpool set off on a run of 18 wins in 22 games with 74 goals scored that almost made him immortal.

The margins were brutally fine. Henderson’s red card in the final moments of the defeat of Manchester City on 13 April left Liverpool with Lucas Leiva and Joe Allen in midfield for the key game against Chelsea. Bad luck, perhaps. But Liverpool also blinked a little.

Rodgers has spoken about how he might have approached that game differently, how anxious his team were to chase the win against a deep double-bolted defence. Aged 41, this was his first time in that place, as manager or player.

 

This is also key to the Rodgers story, his own unusual path from outside to in, one that mirrors in some ways that of Klopp. Rodgers was, if anything, more meteoric. It took him four years to go from a standing start at Watford to his unveiling at Anfield by Tom Werner, fresh-faced and a little dazzled by the lights.

What would have followed had Rodgers’s Liverpool won the league title two years later? Would we have had Klopp’s Liverpool now? The club still spent lavishly in the next transfer window, albeit much of that Suárez-fed binge went on Mario Balotelli, Lazar Markovic, Rickie Lambert and Alberto Moreno.

Meanwhile, the internal workings stagnated. Relationships broke down. James Milner, Joe Gomez and Roberto Firmino turned up just in time to see Rogers leave. But the structures he left were sound enough, the exit music warm rather than destructively bitter (the departing manager even rented his house to Klopp for a while).

Rodgers deserves his footnote in Liverpool’s success. Perhaps he even deserved, in an odd kind of way, to be present, painfully, at the pre-pandemic coronation last December.

 

For now a Leicester team that have been a revelation (yes, another revelation) this season will be desperate to reverse that humiliation in a meeting of two hugely depleted sides. Çaglar Soyuncu and Daniel Amartey are definitely out for Sunday. Ricardo Pereira and Timothy Castagne are still only possibilities. Liverpool have also been further ravaged during the international break.

Scratch squads, a crammed-in fixture list and two teams on a winning roll: 11 months on it promises to be another significant reunion.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2020/nov/22/brendan-rodgers-anfield-past-brings-power-of-ignition-to-latest-reunion

Edited 22 November 2020 by Buce

[Ric Flair]

Maddison having a point to prove is exactly where we want him, use that to fuel the fire. He is showing glimpses of stepping it up a level once again, love him higher up the pitch where he gets on the turn in fast counter attacks. His skill for Vardy's goal at Leeds was electric.

[Spudulike]

On 21/11/2020 at 13:13, Out Foxed said:

as an oadbeh lad. was nice to see. 

Me too 

[davieG]

https://worldfootballindex.com/2020/11/football-against-the-odds-leicester-city-and-english-footballs-greatest-achievement/

 

Football Against The Odds: Leicester City And English Football’s Greatest Achievement

[jonthefox]

On 22/11/2020 at 15:50, Spudulike said:

Me too 

And me 

[urban.spaceman]

In other news we now have a supporters club in Azerbaijan. 
 

 

 

[Guest SO1]

15 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

In other news we now have a supporters club in Azerbaijan. 
 

 

 

  Loved the laser throwing Fox.

[Corky]

https://www.football365.com/news/de-bruyne-overrated-muzzy-izzet-statistic-mailbox

 

Finally. We've all said it here for over 20 years, now it's spread  

[Fox92]

8 minutes ago, Corky said:

https://www.football365.com/news/de-bruyne-overrated-muzzy-izzet-statistic-mailbox

 

Finally. We've all said it here for over 20 years, now it's spread  

Bit disrespectful to Izzet? I know we all love him but people who he played with speak so highly of him too. I've heard a range of our players say Izzet could've played for any side.

 

De Bruyne is good but people forget how good other players were as well.

[Master Fox]

Edited 25 November 2020 by Master Fox

[Corky]

1 hour ago, Fox92 said:

Bit disrespectful to Izzet? I know we all love him but people who he played with speak so highly of him too. I've heard a range of our players say Izzet could've played for any side.

 

De Bruyne is good but people forget how good other players were as well.

Possibly but it was highlighting how good Izzet was too. 

 

He was definitely a player the opposition didn't enjoy facing.

[Blue ROI]

Off The Ball previewing our game on Monday.

 

One of the Celtic fans still salty about Rodgers.

 

[urban.spaceman]

2 hours ago, Blue ROI said:

Off The Ball previewing our game on Monday.

 

One of the Celtic fans still salty about Rodgers.

 

"LiVeRpOoL hAd ThEiR sEcOnD tEaM"

 

So did we you dozy ****ing nonce.

[Leicester_Loyal]

https://arsenal-mania.com/forum/threads/pl-arsenal-v-wolves-sunday-november-29-ko-19-15-gmt-sky-sports.34638/page-86#post-5296405

 

'Terrible.

Aston villa, leicester and now wolves. All 3 teams and man for man you could easily say we have better players than them in those positions. It aint a personell problem'

 

Not sure about that, think I'd only have Auba, Martinelli, Saka and Tierney in our squad, with potentially only Tierney starting over Justin, the rest would all be on the bench or in the reserves. Haven't seen enough of Partey to make a judgement on him yet.

 

Even with our injured squad when we played them, Kasper, Vardy, Tielemans, Fofana, Barnes and Castagne are easily better than their Arsenal counterparts. At full strength we'd also have Ricardo, Ndidi and Cags too.

Edited 30 November 2020 by Leicester_Loyal

[Sunbury Fox]

4 hours ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

https://arsenal-mania.com/forum/threads/pl-arsenal-v-wolves-sunday-november-29-ko-19-15-gmt-sky-sports.34638/page-86#post-5296405

 

'Terrible.

Aston villa, leicester and now wolves. All 3 teams and man for man you could easily say we have better players than them in those positions. It aint a personell problem'

 

Not sure about that, think I'd only have Auba, Martinelli, Saka and Tierney in our squad, with potentially only Tierney starting over Justin, the rest would all be on the bench or in the reserves. Haven't seen enough of Partey to make a judgement on him yet.

 

Even with our injured squad when we played them, Kasper, Vardy, Tielemans, Fofana, Barnes and Castagne are easily better than their Arsenal counterparts. At full strength we'd also have Ricardo, Ndidi and Cags too.

Could not agree more. Arsenal fans just can't see what's in front of their eyes. They're totally deluded if they think they have better players than us. The fact that they're signing players that a so called rival, Chelsea, has deemed as past it sums it all up.