Ricky marking Abraham

[escape2victory]

The most annoying thing for me was the quality of the corners, Pellegrini was on the money. Maddison for whatever reason is terrible at corners, the quality of them last night was so poor. I love Maddison and think he is a great player but for the love of god, take him off corners please !

[Mike Oxlong]

 

The inspiration for our defending corners 

[Mike Oxlong]

2 minutes ago, escape2victory said:

The most annoying thing for me was the quality of the corners, Pellegrini was on the money. Maddison for whatever reason is terrible at corners, the quality of them last night was so poor. I love Maddison and think he is a great player but for the love of god, take him off corners please !

And free kicks into the box. The delivery is exceptionally poor and rarely beats the first man. Almost as if he has lettuce feet 

[Dickov22]

It beggars belief. 

[davieG]

“It’s clearly physicality,” Rodgers said on his team’s set-piece woes. “We’re a team that have done everything to try to change the momentum with the set-pieces, we’ve gone man-to-man, we’ve gone zonal, but it clearly doesn’t work consistently enough.

 

“We have given away too many cheap goals and too many times it’s put us on the back foot and it’s cost us. It’s not the effort of the players. Set-pieces are about organisation, so lots of work goes into that side of it, but it's also about determination and physicality, and clearly we lack physicality in those moments.

“They’ve got five big threats. When you think of the three centre-halves and then Zaniolo up front and then with Tammy, that mismatch was going to be somewhere and unfortunately that’s where it came to (with Ricardo).”

Centre-back Jonny Evans backed his manager’s assessment, that Roma had too many big players for City to cope with. But he did recognise that it was an issue for the side, something that has not been solved by his and Wesley Fofana’s return to the team.

“Set-pieces are a really important part of the game and they’re a problem for us,” Evans said. “It was a problem in the game tonight. When you look at Tammy Abraham is being marked by Ricardo, there’s a problem there with the size difference. It’s very difficult in that situation.

“(Ricardo) was assigned (Abraham). But I just think Roma are a big team and we’re probably not the biggest of teams ourselves, so you’re going to have a situation where there’s going to be a player that’s smaller than another player.”

[smudgerfox]

54 minutes ago, RowlattsFox said:

Is anyone bored enough to look at how many corners we concede? I think that's our first problem. Not a game goes by without the opposition getting corner after corner within no time. Seems that way anyway.

 

Arsenal haven't conceded a goal from a set piece apparently, what are they doing differently because they aren't exactly blessed with height either. More to it than that. 

 

In isolation, it was always going to be a problem against Roma. It was brilliant delivery and a great header. Two things we are unable to do from an attacking point of view, Maddison appears to be kicking a ball made of lead when he takes corners. 

 

Maybe harsh but for me Kasper starting position is part of the problem too. It's an outswinging corner so he should be standing nearer the six yard box rather than his goal line. Far too many times he's trying to save a header from point blank range. 

The goal came from a corner quite unnecessarily conceded by KDH and you’re right we do often do that - misplaced passes, inviting, even imagining pressure at times. 
 

I think the elephant in the room is Kasper. Club captain, legend, world class shot-stopper and all round good egg - but his unwillingness to command the box, maybe his inability to do so, is at the root of the problem. Our defenders are being asked to defend more crosses than their counterparts in other teams , simply because Kasper always,or nearly always, stays on his line. 
 

But he’s undroppable and as The Florest debacle showed there’s no ready made replacement …despite th plethora of keepers at the club… 

Edited 6 May 2022 by smudgerfox

[Guest454545]

If you look at the height comparison between both starting line ups, Roma had 9 players who were 180cm tall or more, with  four of them being 190cm or taller (according to Whoscored). Your boys had only three, with only one player hitting the 190cm mark. You were always going to have a few mismatches. Whatever else you want to say about Rodgers, he's not able to make players taller. 

[los dedos]

They may have a few tall players but Abraham was by far the most dangerous.  Evans or Fofana should have had the task of marking him .

It's not rocket science 

[Kierzz]

1 hour ago, LVocey said:

Fully agree with this:

 

I can completely understand the tactic behind it, we’ve put our 3 taller players (Justin, Fofana and Evans) against their centre backs.

 

I imagine the thought being that Abraham was at the 6 yard box so that brings Kasper into play to claim a lofted cross to that area (although we can all see that’s unlikely), or the near post zonal marker if the cross is low. I’ll imagine we’ve analysed that the bigger threats from corners comes from their centre backs so we have to choose the lesser of 4 evils in this case.

 

Problem is that they were able to spot the mismatch and the ball from Pelegríni takes the near post and Kasper out the game and it’s an incredible header.

 

They are strong at set pieces and we are weak, without shoehorning taller players into the side it was unfortunately always going to be an issue

In hindsight, we should have started with a back three which offers that additional tall CB.

 

There was no space out wide in their set up for our wingers so a wide wing back would have been good enough with an extra body upfront. Like we set up in the second half - although without them scoring early on their would have been more space for our two strikers upfront to cause them problems.

 

Mourinho out thought Rodgers unfortunately and nullified our usual 442 / 4231 set up

[fazzyfox]

55 minutes ago, Mike Oxlong said:

 

The inspiration for our defending corners 

When I first saw it happen it reminded me of this....although Ricardo's expression was more "Ohhhh S**t" !

 

 

 

[Rossiter]

Should have played either Amartey or Vesty then for some height. 

[LVFox]

29 minutes ago, Kierzz said:

In hindsight, we should have started with a back three which offers that additional tall CB.

 

There was no space out wide in their set up for our wingers so a wide wing back would have been good enough with an extra body upfront. Like we set up in the second half - although without them scoring early on their would have been more space for our two strikers upfront to cause them problems.

 

Mourinho out thought Rodgers unfortunately and nullified our usual 442 / 4231 set up

That theory is a lot easier to get behind once we've all seen the performance of Barnes and Lookman in that half - personally think there was space for them on the wings and they did absolutely nothing with it. Both absolutely dreadful performances.

[Kinowe Soorie]

Big on big, double up on a player, and make it difficult for them. Simply not good enough. 
Then down the other end with our corners, we are useless.

Not Rodgers fault apparently.

[davieG]

If Amartey was in the starting line up the Match Thread would have been a shit storm with we need to score why have we got 3 CB Rodgers doesn't know what he's doing. 

[Ricey]

1 hour ago, Koke said:

On fairness to Rodgers, they had Smalling, Ibanez, Mancini, Zaniolo and Abraham all over 6'2. I'm assuming Fofana, Evans and Justin were marking 3 of those. We just don't have enough tall players. 

With so many tall players in their team and their great record at scoring from set pieces, it makes our decision to keep three up front for corners the more baffling decision.

 

Leaving those players forward didn't result in Roma having to push one of their tall players back and we could have done with Vardy in particular to help out.

[Koke]

56 minutes ago, Rossiter said:

Should have played either Amartey or Vesty then for some height. 

 

RIP the match thread if those 2 had started. Rodgers would be called all sorts. 

[RowlattsFox]

We've tried zonal marking, we've tried man to man, we've tried bringing everyone back, and now we've tried emptying the area and leaving bodies up top. None have worked.

 

Comes down to individuals not wanting to defend and desire to win the ball or at the very least make it difficult. That and the consistent problem with Kasper being rooted to his line. 

[LcFc_Smiv]

1 hour ago, los dedos said:

They may have a few tall players but Abraham was by far the most dangerous.  Evans or Fofana should have had the task of marking him .

It's not rocket science 

This, I get the argument regarding height but you don't then put a smaller player on the most dangerous player in the team, especially the form he's in as well. 

[Kierzz]

Someone needs to take accountability for how bad we are at corners.

 

I think I heard previously that Toure is in charge of defensive set pieces so he should be sacked and upgraded.

 

[SecretPro]

Its not just set pieces though. We rarely ever win second balls in the air, especially in the middle of the park. We are weak. 

[sdb]

4 hours ago, Diffco said:

I had to start a full thread for this subject because I just could not believe the ineptitude of Brendan's instruction. Practically smallest player marking their tallest, on our now internationally renowned awful defensive corners. In a European semi final. Away. In what universe did Brendan think that was smart? Literally threw the game with that 1 decision and instruction. He's an utter tactical fraud. 

 

What, 10m a year wage to make those kind of decisions? I can't fathom it. 

I thought it worked OK. We only conceded 1 from a set piece last night. That's better than par for us this season.

[Twitcher]

Surely you match up your best defensive players against the opposition's best attacking players. Traditionally it's been your centre-half marking their centre-forward, and where necessary, your centre-forward picking up their best centre-back who's come forward. Whichever it was clearly wrong last night. I'd spotted it earlier, on either an earlier corner, or before that one was taken. 

The biggest crime was to repeat it on the next corner(s).

[funkyrobot]

I don’t think there’s one fan amongst us who would’ve ever put Ricardo marking  Roma’s very tall top goal scorer Tammy Abraham. Mind boggling decision. To think all of the well paid professional Leicester coaches put their heads together and actually came up by with this as a solution is just wow. 

[st albans fox]

1 hour ago, Kinowe Soorie said:

Big on big, double up on a player, and make it difficult for them. Simply not good enough. 
Then down the other end with our corners, we are useless.

Not Rodgers fault apparently.

We didn’t have enough players to double up - vardy was spare at the front post and I assume Justin took the actual back post. 
we should not have left three up if they were only going to go 3 v 3 

we lost out on an extra ‘floating’ body in the box by doing that 

 

25 minutes ago, funkyrobot said:

I don’t think there’s one fan amongst us who would’ve ever put Ricardo marking  Roma’s very tall top goal scorer Tammy Abraham. Mind boggling decision. To think all of the well paid professional Leicester coaches put their heads together and actually came up by with this as a solution is just wow. 

putting Ricky against one of their centre backs would have been an even bigger mismatch - it was a lose lose scenario. Hence the reason should have gone 3 atb and state in pre match interview why you’ve done it. The fans would have understood that away from home. 
 

And simply showing stats that indicate Abraham scores and assists more than a CB is a tad misleading when discussing corners and set plays  …..

[volpeazzurro]

2 hours ago, Guest454545 said:

If you look at the height comparison between both starting line ups, Roma had 9 players who were 180cm tall or more, with  four of them being 190cm or taller (according to Whoscored). Your boys had only three, with only one player hitting the 190cm mark. You were always going to have a few mismatches. Whatever else you want to say about Rodgers, he's not able to make players taller. 

If he lent them his platforms perhaps?