Will this style of play ever work?

[Tuna]

Can a new manager adapt the style and get it to work at this level? I know you'll all say no, but you know we will appoint another similar manager. Point is, can it be tinkered with to make us better defensively, because this is the biggest problem with the team right now, stop conceding sloppy goals and the results will improve.

[Muzzy_no7]

Whatever ‘style’ RM thinks he’s some sort of disciple of, it isn’t anywhere near what the whole possession and press hungry philosophy is all about.

 

It’s so slow and takes all creativity and decision making away from the players. They look so over coached.

 

Our press is pathetic and we simply NEVER counter attack or overload wide areas to get balls in or cutbacks.

 

This ‘style’ still has a place in modern football, although diminished but whatever RM is trying to do just isn’t anything like peak Pep, Klopp or Enrique. 

[The Doctor]

the style martins playing? no. A possession based style? obviously, plenty of clubs have managed it.

 

The problem is that Martin is a cargo cult manager. He's seen teams like Guardiolas Barca, Spain 2008-12 etc play high possession football to great success and so looks to recreate that. But he lacks any tactical knowledge whatsoever to understand why teams like that were successful. So he looks to reproduce the surface level aspects (knocking it around and having high possession stats) in the hope that that will make the rest of the style knit together - it never will because it has the surface level trappings without any understanding of the inner workings of that style. But, there are absolutely managers out there with the knowledge to put it together

[lfu]

Depends how strict we're being with "the style" but it takes a more intelligent manager than Russell Martin, with a higher quality and better suited group of players, to pull it off.

Maresca (although his style was quite different from Russell's) showed that, for the first half of the season at least, possession football can work and sometimes is very good (other times very boring). But there are too many managers with a poor understanding of how to properly enact a ball-dominant style of play, and worryingly Aiyawatt, Rudkin and now McCarron can't tell the wheat from the chaff.

 

[Dunge]

I don’t see how anything resembling this style of football can work at this club for a generation. Even under Enzo, our fan base wasn’t that engaged with it.

[GrobyLCFC31]

He has a style at 0-0 

 

As soon as we go 1/2-0 down it becomes a mess.
It’s like watching a grassroots team who get told one thing by their coach and another thing by their parents. 
 

Just absolute confusion and flat existence.  

Edited 12 hours ago by GrobyLCFC31

[SafewayFox]

In essence, Martin’s “style” has never really worked based on his previous PPG, goals conceded etc.

 

Football has also progressed, as it always does. 

With the change to 5 subs, the lazy idea of “passing the opposition to death/move them around so much that they tire themselves out” has been nullified.

 

 

[Tuna]

Yeah sorry should have clarified, not Martin ball, I just want to know whether we can have hope again we can be successful if we appoint another possession based manager.

[Monk]

If Robbie Savage can figure us out in 2 minutes it’s a pretty sorry state of affairs. 

[Tuna]

We've basically built a team to play this style, so if we appoint someone who will just do it better and make us more defensively sound, we may improve!

[BrilliantFox]

I think attributing "this style" with Russell Martin is disingenuous. He's a charlatan manager that believes possession in and of itself is enough, trying to mimick succesful coaches who are actually good at managing. (Pep, Maresca, Luis Enrique)

 

Possession-based football is not the problem, Russell Martin is the problem. He's a terrible manager at the root of it.

Edited 12 hours ago by BrilliantFox

[splinterdream]

Doesn't matter about the style yesterday, for me you have to ask questions like

Is Will Alves a left winger?

Does Wes Burns suit this style?

Is BDCR the player we need to play this style?

What does Cullen offer to this system? 

Can we play such a high line? 

Do the players know their jobs? 

 

We had a blank canvas at the start of the summer and we've ballsed it up again.

 

Do we have enough players to give this league a go with another manager?

 

I think we have 

[Finnegan]

Yes. 

 

You can make almost any style of play work at almost any level.

 

If you're good enough at it, you could win the Champions League playing long balls to a target man with conventional wingers playing a throwback 442 like it's 1993. 

 

Teams at all levels of the pyramid have made possession / control football work for them. 

 

But there's two catches:

 

1. It's easier to get 11 professional athletes fit enough to run and press and chase for 90 minutes and to organise them to hold a rigid shape in a low or mid block than it is to coach a team to break that down.

 

You need players good enough to break down defences of the quality relevant to your league and a coach good enough to organise and drill patterns of play that break down opponents. Keeping the ball isn't enough, you have to be able to create good chances with it. 

 

That requires a really good coach. And arguably, the further you go down the pyramid, the better that coach needs to be do that work with a less talented squad. 

 

2. So not only does the job get harder the worse your squad gets, we keep hiring increasingly worse coaches. Enzo was brilliant, people might not like his football but he was very, very good. His understanding of space was peak, his tactics were phenomenal and he coached movement in to the squad brilliantly. 

 

Enzo was elite. Cooper, Cifuentes, Ruud and Martin are all ****ing useless. They're parrots, they're just trying to copy someone else's theory without actually understanding it themselves. It was evident from the way Cooper first lined us up that he didn't understand the individual parts that made Enzo's team successful. 

 

But every coach seems to get worse since. It's not necessarily the style of play that's the problem in itself it's just that it makes finding a manager at this level increasingly harder so you end up having to accept guys like Russell Martin whose future is probably managing non league because he's abject. 

 

[lcfc sheff]

It works at the highest level with the highest quality players. I was willing to give it a chance but at the moment yesterday deflated me so much that I just don’t see it working.

 

there has to be more dynamism, players need to get in more threatening positions, take risks etc 

[FoxesWalk]

Possession style is starting to lose its place at the top of the club game, though still has its place (Spain) for national teams, who are less coherent generally than club sides. 

[ARM1968]

No. Even the best teams are transitioning from pure possession based football. You need the most elite players just to give it a chance and we don’t have anything like that. It’s the Kings new clothes of football - we’re running round the pitch without a stitch on and the only people who can’t see are Martin and our owners. 
 

it has to end and Martin has to go. It’s so simple. We have time but we have to act now. It’s never going to gel. It’s never going to work. 

[Edingleyfox]

It is a very strange style of play. So often Leicester get in good advanced positions but seem to wait for the whole team to catch up by which time the gaps have closed. The ironic cheers with every sideways pass yesterday and lack of ideas said it all. Not surprisingly we get a few shots in but don't score many. Of course with so many camped on the edge of the opponents  box one ball over the top or to a pacey winger we are in trouble. Martin is quick to point to the full backs but there needs to be some sort strategy to prevent this scenario which we also saw v Oxford and  Burton and I haven't seen any reflection on this from the manager.

If we had proper box to box midfielders like KDH and fit players like Abdul tracking back it might work but of course they are long gone.

[v6rat]

Russell Martins obsession with possession based passing football, slow and ponderous, allows the opposing team to set up defensively, get their men behind the ball, and then counter attack quickly when we inevitable lose the ball. This mind numbing passing across the centre of the pitch will never work until he implements forward movement from the strikers with midfields that can make a killer pass. Yesterdays stats of 20 shots with only 4 on target impresses nobody.

[Haywood_6]

No especially not in League One with this group of players.

 

They're just not good enough technically to dominate the ball, break down teams sitting in a deep block. We can't do it. We can't turn possession into any sort of meaningful chances. Can have all the possession in the world, but if we lack the quality to do anything with it, what's the f*kin point.

 

Me personally I've completely lost patience to the point I don't want to watch us play. It's slow, predictable and boring. Possession for possession's sake isn't a philosophy and it's pointless if it doesn't lead to results.

[alanf0x]

Not with the players we have. Harry Souttar is a solid defender man for man but can't  play a ball more than 10 yards for example.

[Muzzy_no7]

25 minutes ago, splinterdream said:

Doesn't matter about the style yesterday, for me you have to ask questions like

Is Will Alves a left winger?

Does Wes Burns suit this style?

Is BDCR the player we need to play this style?

What does Cullen offer to this system? 

Can we play such a high line? 

Do the players know their jobs? 

 

We had a blank canvas at the start of the summer and we've ballsed it up again.

 

Do we have enough players to give this league a go with another manager?

 

I think we have 

I’ve always thought Alves is better suited in the 10 or 8.5. 
 

Burns doesn’t suit it at all and his injury has clearly killed his pace and acceleration.

 

No BDCR should’ve been frozen out in the summer. Big error by RM.

 

Cullen is a second striker, again not suited to a slow 4-3-3/4-1-4-1.

 

High line? We can play it with a better press and better 1v1 defenders. LT and Aluko aren’t suited. 

[Monk]

Martins in a tough position now. I suspect he is safe from the sack for a while yet because of the financial implications. 
 

so what do you do if you’re him?

 

double down on this style?

 

or adapt it?

 

I suspect he will try this style with Smallbone in the team. Might make a difference. That experiment has to last a few games. 
 

but beside that I don’t see it improving and I don’t think he will adapt. 

[Grumpy Git]

Leicester City are a league one football club, playing league one football clubs, with league one players. Not a premiership club, those days are history.

Martin thinks his possession style football will work in league one, it isn’t, but he doesn’t understand that. He blames the players rather than change the style. In this league you can fart around, but other clubs have sussed out it’s easy to break this style down.

He has no plan B and plan A is bollox. How long will this dross continue? When does the before the board react?

[Gamble92]

People say it’s just nostalgia but you watch games from 2008 or whenever and it’s just the game I actually love watching. Even if this magically starts working, which it won’t, it’s boring as ****. It’s painful. 
 

If you’re the better team you will probably have the ball more. That doesn’t mean keeping the ball more will mean you win the game. It’s really that simple Martin. It’s so sad to see a man so in denial. I wanted him to do well and revive his career but he doesn’t deserve it. He exemplifies the Top and Rudkin regime to a ****ing tee. I actually wonder how horrific it needs to get for him to go. It’s going to be a 6-0 home loss. Can’t even throw my season ticket at him any more. 

[Stadt]

First and foremost Martin is a bad coach - even if he abandoned this style he’d be shit at whatever he chanced upon too.

 

He’s an extremist. Plenty of managers coach short build up successfully, Brian Barry-Murphy got Cardiff promoted playing a similar style, as did Chris Davies. Both previously on our coaching staff too.

 

Football is diverging away from Martin’s brand as he’s stuck in 2017, he’s literally the 100th percentile never-go-long, always play short no matter the risk. He’s a Steve Kean but with a ‘progressive’ veneer.

Edited 4 hours ago by Stadt