Leicester City versus Everton Tactical Analysis

[davieG]

4 hours ago, Paninistickers said:

Might be worth a thread in its own, but what is our strongest starting line up? We all seem to be adamant that Cooper is wrong. But I doubt we all consider others' versions correct either. I think my 'strongest', balanced line up wouldn't have many takers tbh; 

 

Mads 

 

JJ or Ricky (dependent on form) 

VK

Faes or Vesty (again on depends form and oppo) 

Okoli 

 

Winks and Skipp

 

Abdul, Wilf, Mavididi 

 

Buonnotte as a false 9

 

....McAteer, Hamza, Ayew, Vards, Iversen, Bilal plus 2 of above on bench 

 

 

[Vazman]

Great analysis, given what you have seen so far, and the fixtures with SC in charge where do you see us position wise 1st Jan 25? 

[StriderHiryu]

5 hours ago, Vazman said:

Great analysis, given what you have seen so far, and the fixtures with SC in charge where do you see us position wise 1st Jan 25? 

Very hard to say till we play the other two promoted teams.

 

If I had to guess, I think we would be just outside the relegation zone, but it would be very close. My fear is that we stay outside of the relegation zone till the last 3-4 games of the season, and then fall into it.

 

A lot of people are on Cooper's back. I think he's actually done some stuff which is quite good, but baffling team lineups, subs and game management are going to get him the sack if he keeps making the same mistakes. It just feels inevitable that he gets sacked, his successor puts Ricardo back into the team, and Riccy P gets MOTM with a win in his first game.

[funkyrobot]

On 22/09/2024 at 02:06, StriderHiryu said:

 

 

It finished 1-1 at a rain-soaked King Power on Saturday. For those of you that went to the game, I salute you!

 

This was a HUGE game for us, and one that come the end of the season could determine our fate. We got a point, but for me it feels like 2 dropped. However, looking at the stats, Everton posed more of a goal threat and despite having more of the ball and out tackling and out passing our opponents, this is 5 games out of 5 in the Premier League where the underlying data suggests that we were not as good as our opponents.

 

 

^ Sofa Score provides ratings for all of the players. These should be taken with a huge grain of salt as they use an automatic algorithm, however, Mavididi being our best player, and McNeil and Ndiaye starring for Everton is certainly in line with the eye test. For me the above graphic further cements what a wasted opportunity this game was. Everton have the oldest squad in the league, and had to play Ashey Young (40 years old!) and James Garner as full backs. They had so many injuries they could not fill their bench and had two keepers to make up sub numbers.

 

 

^ Just to prove my point, look how many players were either missing or nursing an injury. This was a team that was there to be beaten.

 

 

^ The Attack Momentum bar shows that we really took it to Everton for most of the second half. I don't think it's fair to say they were hanging on, but we definitely looked the most likely to score. It's a shame that we couldn't start the game this way, and for me even worse that no subs were made at half time, given the obvious sub was the reason why we got back into it, Buonanotte for El Khanouss.

 

 

^ El Khanouss was the one change we made to the starting line-up and a player I was super excited to see play. Sadly he did not have a great game, but I want to go on the record and say that any player from a foreign league is unlikely to hit the ground running, especially without a preseason. For me he 100% needs to start in the cup game midweek, even if he was poor today.

 

 

^ One of his big issues was the positions he took up. He drifted too deep and too far to the left on too many occasions, reducing his effectiveness. I think this is muscle memory from his time at Genk, where he got involved in the build up frequently.

 

 

^ This is where I WANT to see BEK play. Here he is a good distance away from Mavididi, is high up the pitch and can get involved with the attack.

 

 

^ But too often he got into sub-par positions. Here he is not offering a good passing outlet, and worse if Mavididi received the ball and spun, he would be in Stephy's way!

 

 

^ This is KDH and Mavididi in the early part of last season all over again! They are standing in each other's shadows! Did they watch Gareth Southgate's England?

 

 

^ Compare BEK's position to Kristiansen. I want to see the Moroccan be the box crasher and get invovled. Instead he is sitting back with Winks and Ndidi and staying our of the action.

 

^Overall, he struggled to get involved in today's game.

 

 

 

^ Next I want to focus on James Justin, who has started to feature a lot more in the offensive phase of the game for us in the last two games. In fact, it now seems like we his more of the attacking fullback than Kristiansen.

 

 

^ Here we see our general build-up shape in the first half. Ayew would invert from the wing and in the vacated space, JJ would push on to become a winger in the offensive phase.

 

 

^ Similar to last season, we would try and find our wide players by switching the ball to them / going long. Faes was good at this last season, and has been doing this for us more and more as the season has continued.

 

 

^ JJ puts in a half decent cross, and did this a few times. However, I can't help but think how much more effective this would be if it was Ricardo instead...

 

 

 

^ Everton signed Ndiaye in the summer and because JJ pushed up, it meant he had more time than most to get the ball and drive with it. And you have to say, he had a great game.

 

 

^ He's 1 on 1 versus Justin here and after playing a 1-2 leaves him for dead. (NOTE: Replace with GIF later)

 

 

^ Despite being surrounded by players, he engineers an opening and finishes to make it 1-0, and at this point in the game, it's no more than Everton deserved. We had struggled to get going, had made a few unforced errors, and couldn't connect passes together.

 

 

^ Cooper has tried to establish his own system on the team this season, but I don't think it's working too well. There are too many occasions where players are standing in awkward positions, or when we succesfully transition, we aren't effective in our attack because of the positions we are taking up.

 

 

^ It's possible that in the above picture, the players are in the positions that Cooper wants them to be. But I think that strucuturally this has many issues that would leave us in big trouble on a turnover, and in this case, even though we progress the ball, lead to a suboptimal attacking situation.

 

 

^ Following the above sequence, Ayew receives the ball and drives forwards. But because he has inverted heavily, it means that in this attack, there is a lack of a wide man to find. Compare this to last season where we would attack with 5 players, the two wingers, two box crashers and the striker. If there was a wide man supporting here, it's an easy forward pass into acres of space and a great opportunity. But we don't play like that anymore.

 

 

^ Ndidi changed back to be more of a build up player today instead of a box crasher. He had a good game, despite lacking somewhat in the offensive phase.

 

 

^ JJ pushed up, meaning he's out of position in transition after a turnover. Ndidi needs to come across and help him out.

 

 

And that's just what he does. Winning the ball back and giving us an offensive transition.

 

 

^ Ndidi supposedly "has the touch of a donkey." But does he? He's much better than people give him credit for. He's no Kevin De Bruyne, but I think he has overall been our best player this season, and is the top assist provider for the team.

 

 

^ But I can't defend him every time. Here, the less said the better. But here I also want to point out that when the team has players like Kristiansen and Ayew, you might be better at winning duels, but you lack quality in the final third. I don't think either should be starting for us in games where we are expected to attack and go for it.

 

 

^ Our underlying data stinks. It suggests we have acutally outperformed our expected results because of chances created and given up. This is scary to see.

 

 

 

^ We've just had a stinking first half and been comfortably second best. We'll obviously make a few subs at half time and get into Everton straight from kick-off right? Wrong! We leave it to minute 55 to make the obvious sub and bring on Buonanotte for the struggling Khanouss.

 

 

^ And we immediately improve. Facundo takes up the right positions, facillitating build-up and box-crashing where appropriate. Mavididi now has space to run into, and changes the game.

 

 

^ Ndidi now starts to attack and push up much higher he and Facundo combine regularly to drag the whole team furhter up the field.

 

 

^ The entire system starts to work. Faes can now pick up the ball and switch the ball out to find Mavididi free.

 

 

^ How do we get the best out of Mavididi? We isolate a full back 1v1 against him. In his current form, Mavididi can put them on toast and cause havoc.

 

 

^ From this sequence the ball finds it's way to Ndidi. Sadly he lacks the killer pass, but there's nothing wrong with this move. This is the sort of sequence and play we need to see us do more often!

 

 

^ The change of shape unleashes Mavidi. Not only does the goal come from him, but he's responsible for almost all our best moments.

 

 

^ Mavididi driving at Garner and causing him all sorts of problems.

 

 

^ Garner goes into the book. He simply can't handle Stephy.

 

 

^ More great work from Mavididi from a corner. Our set piece coach is putting in work!

 

 

^ Ndidi involved (again) with winning physical duels to get us a goal. Scoring off a set piece again, good to see.

 

 

 

^ So we get back to 1-1 with 20 minutes to play. Surely we push on for the winner right? We make lots of attacking subs, use the bench and go for it!? Erm...

 

 

^ In total we made just 3 subs in the match. A gassed Vardy removed on 83, and our best player subbed off at 90 for Fatawu. That's right despite one of our wingers having a booked full back on toast, we take him off. We keep on Ayew, even though Fatwu cuts in on his left foot, and do this on the 90th minute. Awful, awful subs.

 

 

 

^ Here are my overall thoughts from the game.

 

 

^ Shout outs to these 3 players, who I think had strong games.

 

 

 

^ Crazily though we dropped points, we stay in the same position, 15th. Wolves are the suprise team at the bottom and might be the first team to change their manager. The longer you leave a manager change, the fewer good options there are that available...

 

 

^ I am not Cooper's biggest fan. We are currently NOT in the relegation zone, which is a good thing. However, if that PSR penalty wasn't avoided, we would not be looking too good right now. The above are facts from this season, and for me make grim reading.

 

 

^ In my opinion these are the best aspects of our play this season. They are actually the same as last season, though I feel we are less gooat them.

 

 

^ So how do we fix things? If it was down to me, I would go back to the same system as last season. You could have Ricardo in here as an inverted fullback, or get Vestergaard back into the team. But I want to see BOTH wingers come into the team, or at least two wide players, and drop the supporting fullback nonsense.

 

 

^ If we have to use Cooper's system, then get Ricardo into that team and drop Kristiansen. He puts in maybe two left crosses a game, we won't miss much. Not playing Ricardo feels like a decision on the same level as dropping Vardy for Demarai Gray, or dropping Alan Shearer when in a relegation battle.

 

Hope you enjoyed the write-up and would appreicate liking, commenting, subscribing and all that jazz on the video above!

 

Next week is a nice easy game at... Arsenal

 

 

Can you send this to Cooper and cc Top? Cooper doesn’t appear to have half your tactical nous or even the tactical nous of us fans going crazy in the stands. He’s making such obviously bad, illogical decisions that it feels like he’s doing it on purpose. Is he actually Agent Cooper from the Notts Forest Secret Service I wonder? 🤔

[Izzy]

There’s no way @StriderHiryu holds down a full time job with the time required to do all this analysis and video editing. No way.

 

He’s either a lottery winner or has rich parents. 

[Vazman]

3 hours ago, StriderHiryu said:

Very hard to say till we play the other two promoted teams.

 

If I had to guess, I think we would be just outside the relegation zone, but it would be very close. My fear is that we stay outside of the relegation zone till the last 3-4 games of the season, and then fall into it.

 

A lot of people are on Cooper's back. I think he's actually done some stuff which is quite good, but baffling team lineups, subs and game management are going to get him the sack if he keeps making the same mistakes. It just feels inevitable that he gets sacked, his successor puts Ricardo back into the team, and Riccy P gets MOTM with a win in his first game.

Thanks for your thoughts many off which I agree with, and seems to be a common thread on most posts, I do think his team selections and weird subs will be his and our downfall.

[StriderHiryu]

4 hours ago, Izzy said:

There’s no way @StriderHiryu holds down a full time job with the time required to do all this analysis and video editing. No way.

 

He’s either a lottery winner or has rich parents. 

I have to say that it's becoming more and more challenging. I am secretly glad we aren't playing in Europe because I wouldn't be able to keep up!

 

After doing it for a while I have sped up my workflow, but I will say that something I talked to @Mark about in the past would be to allow movie clips to be embedded into the forum. The most time consumin aspect is changing a clip into a GIF. Often times the GIF is too big, or doesn't upload properly and it can take hours. It would be no problem if I could upload to YouTube, but for obvious reasons, they won't allow copyright clips, which is super annoying!

[HoustonFox]

On 21/09/2024 at 21:06, StriderHiryu said:

 

 

It finished 1-1 at a rain-soaked King Power on Saturday. For those of you that went to the game, I salute you!

 

This was a HUGE game for us, and one that come the end of the season could determine our fate. We got a point, but for me it feels like 2 dropped. However, looking at the stats, Everton posed more of a goal threat and despite having more of the ball and out tackling and out passing our opponents, this is 5 games out of 5 in the Premier League where the underlying data suggests that we were not as good as our opponents.

 

 

^ Sofa Score provides ratings for all of the players. These should be taken with a huge grain of salt as they use an automatic algorithm, however, Mavididi being our best player, and McNeil and Ndiaye starring for Everton is certainly in line with the eye test. For me the above graphic further cements what a wasted opportunity this game was. Everton have the oldest squad in the league, and had to play Ashey Young (40 years old!) and James Garner as full backs. They had so many injuries they could not fill their bench and had two keepers to make up sub numbers.

 

 

^ Just to prove my point, look how many players were either missing or nursing an injury. This was a team that was there to be beaten.

 

 

^ The Attack Momentum bar shows that we really took it to Everton for most of the second half. I don't think it's fair to say they were hanging on, but we definitely looked the most likely to score. It's a shame that we couldn't start the game this way, and for me even worse that no subs were made at half time, given the obvious sub was the reason why we got back into it, Buonanotte for El Khanouss.

 

 

^ El Khanouss was the one change we made to the starting line-up and a player I was super excited to see play. Sadly he did not have a great game, but I want to go on the record and say that any player from a foreign league is unlikely to hit the ground running, especially without a preseason. For me he 100% needs to start in the cup game midweek, even if he was poor today.

 

 

^ One of his big issues was the positions he took up. He drifted too deep and too far to the left on too many occasions, reducing his effectiveness. I think this is muscle memory from his time at Genk, where he got involved in the build up frequently.

 

 

^ This is where I WANT to see BEK play. Here he is a good distance away from Mavididi, is high up the pitch and can get involved with the attack.

 

 

^ But too often he got into sub-par positions. Here he is not offering a good passing outlet, and worse if Mavididi received the ball and spun, he would be in Stephy's way!

 

 

^ This is KDH and Mavididi in the early part of last season all over again! They are standing in each other's shadows! Did they watch Gareth Southgate's England?

 

 

^ Compare BEK's position to Kristiansen. I want to see the Moroccan be the box crasher and get invovled. Instead he is sitting back with Winks and Ndidi and staying our of the action.

 

^Overall, he struggled to get involved in today's game.

 

 

 

^ Next I want to focus on James Justin, who has started to feature a lot more in the offensive phase of the game for us in the last two games. In fact, it now seems like we his more of the attacking fullback than Kristiansen.

 

 

^ Here we see our general build-up shape in the first half. Ayew would invert from the wing and in the vacated space, JJ would push on to become a winger in the offensive phase.

 

 

^ Similar to last season, we would try and find our wide players by switching the ball to them / going long. Faes was good at this last season, and has been doing this for us more and more as the season has continued.

 

 

^ JJ puts in a half decent cross, and did this a few times. However, I can't help but think how much more effective this would be if it was Ricardo instead...

 

 

 

^ Everton signed Ndiaye in the summer and because JJ pushed up, it meant he had more time than most to get the ball and drive with it. And you have to say, he had a great game.

 

 

^ He's 1 on 1 versus Justin here and after playing a 1-2 leaves him for dead. (NOTE: Replace with GIF later)

 

 

^ Despite being surrounded by players, he engineers an opening and finishes to make it 1-0, and at this point in the game, it's no more than Everton deserved. We had struggled to get going, had made a few unforced errors, and couldn't connect passes together.

 

 

^ Cooper has tried to establish his own system on the team this season, but I don't think it's working too well. There are too many occasions where players are standing in awkward positions, or when we succesfully transition, we aren't effective in our attack because of the positions we are taking up.

 

 

^ It's possible that in the above picture, the players are in the positions that Cooper wants them to be. But I think that strucuturally this has many issues that would leave us in big trouble on a turnover, and in this case, even though we progress the ball, lead to a suboptimal attacking situation.

 

 

^ Following the above sequence, Ayew receives the ball and drives forwards. But because he has inverted heavily, it means that in this attack, there is a lack of a wide man to find. Compare this to last season where we would attack with 5 players, the two wingers, two box crashers and the striker. If there was a wide man supporting here, it's an easy forward pass into acres of space and a great opportunity. But we don't play like that anymore.

 

 

^ Ndidi changed back to be more of a build up player today instead of a box crasher. He had a good game, despite lacking somewhat in the offensive phase.

 

 

^ JJ pushed up, meaning he's out of position in transition after a turnover. Ndidi needs to come across and help him out.

 

 

And that's just what he does. Winning the ball back and giving us an offensive transition.

 

 

^ Ndidi supposedly "has the touch of a donkey." But does he? He's much better than people give him credit for. He's no Kevin De Bruyne, but I think he has overall been our best player this season, and is the top assist provider for the team.

 

 

^ But I can't defend him every time. Here, the less said the better. But here I also want to point out that when the team has players like Kristiansen and Ayew, you might be better at winning duels, but you lack quality in the final third. I don't think either should be starting for us in games where we are expected to attack and go for it.

 

 

^ Our underlying data stinks. It suggests we have acutally outperformed our expected results because of chances created and given up. This is scary to see.

 

 

 

^ We've just had a stinking first half and been comfortably second best. We'll obviously make a few subs at half time and get into Everton straight from kick-off right? Wrong! We leave it to minute 55 to make the obvious sub and bring on Buonanotte for the struggling Khanouss.

 

 

^ And we immediately improve. Facundo takes up the right positions, facillitating build-up and box-crashing where appropriate. Mavididi now has space to run into, and changes the game.

 

 

^ Ndidi now starts to attack and push up much higher he and Facundo combine regularly to drag the whole team furhter up the field.

 

 

^ The entire system starts to work. Faes can now pick up the ball and switch the ball out to find Mavididi free.

 

 

^ How do we get the best out of Mavididi? We isolate a full back 1v1 against him. In his current form, Mavididi can put them on toast and cause havoc.

 

 

^ From this sequence the ball finds it's way to Ndidi. Sadly he lacks the killer pass, but there's nothing wrong with this move. This is the sort of sequence and play we need to see us do more often!

 

 

^ The change of shape unleashes Mavidi. Not only does the goal come from him, but he's responsible for almost all our best moments.

 

 

^ Mavididi driving at Garner and causing him all sorts of problems.

 

 

^ Garner goes into the book. He simply can't handle Stephy.

 

 

^ More great work from Mavididi from a corner. Our set piece coach is putting in work!

 

 

^ Ndidi involved (again) with winning physical duels to get us a goal. Scoring off a set piece again, good to see.

 

 

 

^ So we get back to 1-1 with 20 minutes to play. Surely we push on for the winner right? We make lots of attacking subs, use the bench and go for it!? Erm...

 

 

^ In total we made just 3 subs in the match. A gassed Vardy removed on 83, and our best player subbed off at 90 for Fatawu. That's right despite one of our wingers having a booked full back on toast, we take him off. We keep on Ayew, even though Fatwu cuts in on his left foot, and do this on the 90th minute. Awful, awful subs.

 

 

 

^ Here are my overall thoughts from the game.

 

 

^ Shout outs to these 3 players, who I think had strong games.

 

 

 

^ Crazily though we dropped points, we stay in the same position, 15th. Wolves are the suprise team at the bottom and might be the first team to change their manager. The longer you leave a manager change, the fewer good options there are that available...

 

 

^ I am not Cooper's biggest fan. We are currently NOT in the relegation zone, which is a good thing. However, if that PSR penalty wasn't avoided, we would not be looking too good right now. The above are facts from this season, and for me make grim reading.

 

 

^ In my opinion these are the best aspects of our play this season. They are actually the same as last season, though I feel we are less gooat them.

 

 

^ So how do we fix things? If it was down to me, I would go back to the same system as last season. You could have Ricardo in here as an inverted fullback, or get Vestergaard back into the team. But I want to see BOTH wingers come into the team, or at least two wide players, and drop the supporting fullback nonsense.

 

 

^ If we have to use Cooper's system, then get Ricardo into that team and drop Kristiansen. He puts in maybe two left crosses a game, we won't miss much. Not playing Ricardo feels like a decision on the same level as dropping Vardy for Demarai Gray, or dropping Alan Shearer when in a relegation battle.

 

Hope you enjoyed the write-up and would appreicate liking, commenting, subscribing and all that jazz on the video above!

 

Next week is a nice easy game at... Arsenal

 

 

 

On 22/09/2024 at 13:25, StriderHiryu said:

It's definitely possible that I'm over analysing it! I saw a quote recently saying that in the football analytics industry people are spending millions of pounds to essentially find out the same thing "the closer to goal you shoot the ball, the more likely it is to go in!"

 

Trying to be objective, my concern is that the system Cooper is trying to implement is inherently flawed in certain aspects of the game. That can happen to any system and any manager, see how the 442 is basically dead, or how Conte's 343 got figured out pretty badly during his Spurs reign (though it's not doing badly at all at Napoli).

 

My two biggest concerns are:

- In build-up, the two CDM's don't always play next to one another, making it easier IMO to disrupt us when starting attacks.

- Our fullbacks pushing up to support make us more vulnerable than last season. We've already conceded 3 goals from the right hand side when JJ has pushed up at the wrong time.

 

From a structural viewpoint, I think these need to be fixed.

Great analysis as always! 
 

I would have liked to see a little more on the goal we conceded (and chances in general) which you get into a bit here but don’t delve in. 

 

Hot topic is as you said the goals down the right but I think a lot of hate is being heaped on JJ as he’s the RB but also because he’s not Ricky P. 
 

Faes is the RCB, Winks is the CDM and Cooper is the manager and if the tactic is to have JJ bomb on then these 3 need to sort themselves out massively. Yes, JJ was beat on the 1-2 but where was his cover? Faes was (again) in no man’s land and to call what Winks did to stop the shot is an insult to defending.
 

Cooper needs impose a lot more positional discipline, especially if we have overlaps. As you said, we are too easy to counter and open up and players out of position and not covering compounds this. 
 

I honestly couldn’t tell if we are 4231 or 433 last match. I think more the latter but the 8s need to help out if full backs push on. That’s how Enzo and pep operate, as do Liverpool. Winks is not going to be a covering 6 and was successful last season because he wasn’t expected to be. Part of him being a shadow of himself is this. I think you can only play one of El-K, Wilf or Buonna right now if Winks is in the team. He worked as a 6 because we had a back 3 base and Ricky stepping up to help and also helping cover right. 
 

The new Wilf is great and pressuring and tackling up the pitch is all well and good if we do something with it, but we aren’t. He needs to help out more further back and on the right. 
 

Midfield 3 for me is Buonna, Wilf and Skip. I’d keep  JJ but as 3rd CB and bring Ricky in, either from right or left. We just need a firmer base that provides more stability and closes gaps at the back more effectively. Once again (like the Spurs game), we were lucky with the draw based on the quality of chances our opposition missed