My Two penneth

[Swedging]

full-time football would probably have meant a wage cut

---------

Loads of people do nothing in their lives, or live their lives through others, because they don't have the belief

or the bottle to follow dreams.

Instead, they are forever neutralised by thoughts of losing/giving up their job and their comfortable security

Hmm.

[Thracian]

Has it occured to you though that these crap footballers you talk about like Hughes, etc were actually some of the best players in their age group when they broke through. If this wasn't the case they wouldn't have broken through, because as you are aware it's very hard to make it as a young footballer in an academy, yet Hughes who was Rangers best youngster 6 years ago managed to defy this problem and broke through. It's now that he's established as a first team player that he's getting criticism, so there is a very big chance that could happen to many of our youngsters in our academy. It's a hard business, that can be made out to be easier than it is.

But for the record, I do share alot of your views on the football i'd like us to try and advocate and that every player starts off as a youngster in the academy so we should look to always bring through youngsters each season.

I accept all you say about Hughes and still believe it is the legacy of his ongoing injury that has almost certainly affected his form. I only used him as an example really and while as a manager I would have had to look at potential alternatives until such time as he recovered I don't actually take any pleasure from seeing any player struggle especially a 100% player like him.

I think you're right about the Academy lads getting criticised when and if they move upwards but there still comes a time when you have to show and ease them through to greater responsibility and you have to do so with a bit of care and understanding.

But, in the first instance people might be pleasantly surprised at their ability and at the very least they and the club will learn what and how serious their shortcomings are.

But one or at most two at a time in the 16. I know you won't think I'm advocating a youth team but some will.

[Ric Flair]

I accept all you say about Hughes and still believe it is the legacy of his ongoing injury that has almost certainly affected his form. I only used him as an example really and while as a manager I would have had to look at potential alternatives until such time as he recovered I don't actually take any pleasure from seeing any player struggle especially a 100% player like him.

I think you're right about the Academy lads getting criticised when and if they move upwards but there still comes a time when you have to show and ease them through to greater responsibility and you have to do so with a bit of care and understanding.

But, in the first instance people might be pleasantly surprised at their ability and at the very least they and the club will learn what and how serious their shortcomings are.

But one or at most two at a time in the 16. I know you won't think I'm advocating a youth team but some will.

Spot on.

[Thracian]

Whilst your views on life are quite right, it is what you make of it, it is totally differnt to a football club. The main differnce being you have direct control over your life, you dont have direct control over Leicester City.

You will also find that if we had not signed any new players over the past say two or three years and attempted to get the ones we have to play like Brasil, we would more then likely be in League Two. As Mr Flair says Stephen Hughes was suppouse to be the best thing in Scottish football at one point, much higher rated then any youngster we have had here. Yet you think he shold be replaced.. What happens when you bring the youth into the first team and they fall flat on their face ala Sheehan. Whats Plan B?

There have been plenty of teams who have concentrated on growing there own assets with a long term manager. It doesn't equal success, look at Crewe.

I would replace any injured player until he was recovered and it is well documented that Hughes is injured.

I also believe Crewe have enjoyed unparalleled success under Dario Gradi, and the best year-on-year spell in their otherwise uninspiring history.

I don't feel happy commenting about them in detail but two things strike me from a distance. First that Dario has been at the club so long he might have gone stale and secondly that it appeared the club made the cardinal sin of selling a big money striker (however much it might have benefitted Dario monetarily) without having ready made replacements.

The truth is that with their level of support Divison One is probably the best they are suited to and only Gradi's coaching brilliance and ability to spot talent has consistently elevated them beyond their norm. Crewe so appreciated his grow-your-own achievements that, as I recall, he was given a reported 10-year rolling contract and not many managers get that sort of recommendation.

Eric Worthington, a then Woodhouse Eaves-based acquaintance of Gradi from Loughborough Colleges days told me that Gradi was as good as it got when it came to coaching. Knowing how good Worthington was at various levels (my own club didn't lose for two seasons under his guidance) I have every reason to accept his opinion.

[Manwell Pablo]

I would replace any injured player until he was recovered and it is well documented that Hughes is injured.

I also believe Crewe have enjoyed unparalleled success under Dario Gradi, and the best year-on-year spell in their otherwise uninspiring history.

I don't feel happy commenting about them in detail but two things strike me from a distance. First that Dario has been at the club so long he might have gone stale and secondly that it appeared the club made the cardinal sin of selling a big money striker (however much it might have benefitted Dario monetarily) without having ready made replacements.

The truth is that with their level of support Divison One is probably the best they are suited to and only Gradi's coaching brilliance and ability to spot talent has consistently elevated them beyond their norm. Crewe so appreciated his grow-your-own achievements that, as I recall, he was given a reported 10-year rolling contract and not many managers get that sort of recommendation.

Eric Worthington, a then Woodhouse Eaves-based acquaintance of Gradi from Loughborough Colleges days told me that Gradi was as good as it got when it came to coaching. Knowing how good Worthington was at various levels (my own club didn't lose for two seasons under his guidance) I have every reason to accept his opinion.

This is where you problem lies. You look at things from too much of a Leicestershire point of view, and IMO you dont have a very good undestanding of how the game is played throughout the country, or by players/managers you haven't seen down the local.

[Thracian]

This is where you problem lies. You look at things from too much of a Leicestershire point of view, and IMO you dont have a very good undestanding of how the game is played throughout the country, or by players/managers you haven't seen down the local.

I love it. You're obviously too young to have known Eric Worthington and nor do you have any idea how much football I've watched or been involved with either here or elsewhere.

[Swedging]

I love it. You're obviously too young to have known Eric Worthington and nor do you have any idea how much football watched or been involved with either here or elsewhere.

Girls' school coach, wasn't he? Went on to bigger ladies, with hairy 'pits and Ozzie accents? (Probably reminded him of his fellow students at lboro)

(my own club didn't lose for two seasons under his guidance)

I did wonder about the silver lingerie on your avatar.

[Guest]

He was semi-pro because he and his father owned a bloody good business and he played football because he loved playing football....................................................................

He says to the girl who is doing a part time degree to finally get the career she really wants?

I'm all for attacking football, Thracian, but you need the personnel for it, and you also need a solid base behind it otherwise you still won't win games. I think that suring up the defence and getting a bit of steel in midfield is the way forwards, before even thinking about winning games by 3-4 goals or whatever. To be honest, I'd rather be seen as a team that's hard to beat. It's not as if being the most entertaining team in the world will make everyone else like us, is it.

[Thracian]

He says to the girl who is doing a part time degree to finally get the career she really wants?

I'm all for attacking football, Thracian, but you need the personnel for it, and you also need a solid base behind it otherwise you still won't win games. I think that suring up the defence and getting a bit of steel in midfield is the way forwards, before even thinking about winning games by 3-4 goals or whatever. To be honest, I'd rather be seen as a team that's hard to beat. It's not as if being the most entertaining team in the world will make everyone else like us, is it.

Come on Leesoh. I could think of lots of complimentary things to say about you but when have you been all for attacking football? You seem instinctively cautious rather than adventurous. As I remember you were the last one left on this forum to even believe we were safe from relegation and advocated no easing up until we were.

Consequently not only did we fail to give any of our fringe players experience of first team football but the team performance tailed off because some of the guys who had shouldered all the workload were either knackered or injured or a bit of both (particularly Stearman and Hughes).

Everything you say about football - while being perfectly sensible as a point of view - is caution-based and emphasises exactly what you advocate above - being hard to beat.

The trouble is the more resources you employ making yourself "hard to beat" the harder it becomes to win because you have insufficient attacking skill to break down opposing defences.

From what little I've seen of the World Cup so far even our top level coaching looks sadly uninspired and outdated, a point which I honestly believe has been apparent at Leicester, particularly with such things as set plays and our constant insistence on playing a system which doesn't suit our existing personnel.

I actually believe that Eriksson's winning the World Cup would set football back years - with his ridiculous "what we have we hold" approach which, to my mind, is almost always doomed to disaster in the end because sooner or later we'll run out of defensive luck or we'll get the wrong side of the referee or a penalty shoot-out.

Indeed in some camps coaches seem to be a curse cos I often think a team might play better if it were just left to get on with it instead of being pissed about by so-often misguided tacticians.

You and I will never have the same football philosophy but I do wish you every success in your degreee course and in attaining your intended career goal. I am quite sure you'll have earned it.

[Guest]

Come on Leesoh. I could think of lots of complimentary things to say about you but when have you been all for attacking football? You seem instinctively cautious rather than adventurous. As I remember you were the last one left on this forum to even believe we were safe from relegation and advocated no easing up until we were.

Consequently not only did we fail to give any of our fringe players experience of first team football but the team performance tailed off because some of the guys who had shouldered all the workload were either knackered or injured or a bit of both (particularly Stearman and Hughes).

Everything you say about football - while being perfectly sensible as a point of view - is caution-based and emphasises exactly what you advocate above - being hard to beat.

The trouble is the more resources you employ making yourself "hard to beat" the harder it becomes to win because you have insufficient attacking skill to break down opposing defences.

From what little I've seen of the World Cup so far even our top level coaching looks sadly uninspired and outdated, a point which I honestly believe has been apparent at Leicester, particularly with such things as set plays and our constant insistence on playing a system which doesn't suit our existing personnel.

I actually believe that Eriksson's winning the World Cup would set football back years - with his ridiculous "what we have we hold" approach which, to my mind, is almost always doomed to disaster in the end because sooner or later we'll run out of defensive luck or we'll get the wrong side of the referee or a penalty shoot-out.

Indeed in some camps coaches seem to be a curse cos I often think a team might play better if it were just left to get on with it instead of being pissed about by so-often misguided tacticians.

You and I will never have the same football philosophy but I do wish you every success in your degreee course and in attaining your intended career goal. I am quite sure you'll have earned it.

If attacking football is that easy, then why isn't everyone else doing it? Look at the Champions League, it's entertainment all the way, I don't think.

I suppose you begrudge MON the relative success he had here. What a negative so and so he was.

[Thracian]

MON was a classic example of a man who played in a manner brilliantly suited to the players at his disposal.

Furthermore he put his own stamp on the side - it had character, passion and it did attack in its own special and inimitable way.

I loved his team. They were like warriors. People like Walsh and Marshall and Heskey and Guppy and Lennon and Muzzy had this indomitable spirit and belief in their ability to win. What other team would have gone into Genghis Khan mode and snatched that 3-3 miracle against Arsenal?

They might not have been flowing footballers but they launched their forces into enemy territory in counter attacks that re-defined the word ferocity. Rarely have I seen a City team play from the heart as they did.

What does it matter what they do in the Champions League, the Premiership, the Bundesliga, or even in Victoria Park?. What matters is the way we play and the stories we will be able to tell our kids.

Who wants to follow others anyway?. Why not lead instead of following. Let us fly our own flag for football.

And if the whole bloody world is strangling themselves and the game with tactics governed by fear then why shouldn't we set trends for ourselves and try to play the game as if we love it instead of insulting its possibilities with leaden ideas and unenlightened players?

I've outlined how it can be done but it won't be done with a weak will. We have to fill our team with people capable of attack. It wasn't just Heskey and Marshall who thundered into opposition areas it was Walsh and Elliott as well. By footballing standards it was like nuking the bastards...

And do you know what. Those guys weren't the most skillful that money could buy. What they had was attitude. They were football's equivalent of the Dirty Dozen and they never willingly conceded one yard of ground or one single point they could have rescued.

That's what I want back at Leicester. As emphasised by a team full of characters who are all capable, indeed driven, to attack at every opportunity and who consider the very act of losing possession or playing for time to be an insult to their ability.

[Guest]

So do you want free flowing attacking football, or battling characters?

Once you've sorted that one out, who's going to pay for these players?

[Thracian]

I want a balance. But who says attacking players shouldn't have character anyway? It is what often sets the best ones apart and is one of the reasons I get mildly concened when Kelly talks about "the right sort", but that's another story.

We've not always had to pay a fortune for such characters across the years. That's what managers are paid for - signing/developing the right personnel and getting them to play. People manage it every year at one level or another and don't all have a giant wedge.

Leicester's best ever teams weren't purchased with endless funds.

And we would have more funds if we didn't waste so much...and I'm talking now not in Peter Taylor days. At least seven of our signings have been a waste of wages this season - at least for most of the time - and it doesn't look as if our Academy will produce anything this season which makes you wonder why we are signing too many players who fail to make it and why we are unable to give them the final lift up to first team level.

Is it the players, the coaching or the fact that bench places are too often given to "bad" signings in the hope that they eventually justify the outlay on them?.

[Guest]

I want a balance.

And you don't think I do?

[Fez of Mahrez]

Don't sign any bad players! How revolutionary. Someone should really tell Rob Kelly.

[Thracian]

There is nothing revolutionary in anything I say. It is mostly simple common sense just like signing players.

Perhaps you can explain why we sign so many players who would rate poor-ordinary by any yardstick.

For instance take the signing of a centred-forward. I said right at the beginning of the season that City needed to sign strikers with a proven goalscoring pedigree.

No, not necessarily hyper expensive guys who've scored 20 goals a season at Championship or Premiership level but certainly guys who have scored 15-25 goals a season at some level.

Natural strikers score goals from the first day their appear in their junior school teams and just carry on. Ashley Chambers and Louis Dodds are the sort whose names appear constantly on scoresheets even if it's just for a free-kick or penalty.

In Elvis Hammond we sign a guy with pace, strength and a genuine desire to do his best - but no goalscoring pedigree whatsoever. Where is the logic?. And even worse, where's the logic in buying him (when we could keep him, on loan) considering he still hadn't scored very often?

I just use Elvis as an example of my point - he was/is not our worst signing by any means.

[Thracian]

And you don't think I do?

I am quite sure you do but I just have the feeling that you start with a philosophy of caution first.

By that I mean if we have a defence that concedes goals I feel that your approach would be to add another defender to the mix whereas mine would be to get rid of the defender/s who were unable to cope or find out the reasons and adjust the system/improve the player/s.

I would never compromise my team's attacking potential because I would always consider that one of the reasons we were conceding goals was that the ball was not where it should be: in our possession and in their half.

That doesn't mean being reckless. It means having a team of footballers all demonstrably capable of passing quickly and accurately and all ruthless enough to want to do it whatever the score or the stage of the match. In other words, sitting back on a lead would simply not enter their head and if it did they would soon know about it.

[MONreborn]

I am quite sure you do but I just have the feeling that you start with a philosophy of caution first.

By that I mean if we have a defence that concedes goals I feel that your approach would be to add another defender to the mix whereas mine would be to get rid of the defender/s who were unable to cope or find out the reasons and adjust the system/improve the player/s.

I would never compromise my team's attacking potential because I would always consider that one of the reasons we were conceding goals was that the ball was not where it should be: in our possession and in their half.

That doesn't mean being reckless. It means having a team of footballers all demonstrably capable of passing quickly and accurately and all ruthless enough to want to do it whatever the score or the stage of the match. In other words, sitting back on a lead would simply not enter their head and if it did they would soon know about it.

I don't mean to have a go, but your just over complicating the whole concept of football. Like Rob Kelly says, it's a simple game...You score more goals then your opponents.

[l444ry]

I am quite sure you do but I just have the feeling that you start with a philosophy of caution first.

By that I mean if we have a defence that concedes goals I feel that your approach would be to add another defender to the mix whereas mine would be to get rid of the defender/s who were unable to cope or find out the reasons and adjust the system/improve the player/s.

I would never compromise my team's attacking potential because I would always consider that one of the reasons we were conceding goals was that the ball was not where it should be: in our possession and in their half.

That doesn't mean being reckless. It means having a team of footballers all demonstrably capable of passing quickly and accurately and all ruthless enough to want to do it whatever the score or the stage of the match. In other words, sitting back on a lead would simply not enter their head and if it did they would soon know about it.

Thracian, there are supporters at every club in Britain and at all standards who believe in your football philosophy. Just suppose for one moment that every one of those clubs adopted your approach. There would still be winners and there would still be losers. It is because no team will ever be equal to another that the novel concept of tactics became prevalent. I take my hat off to you for your spirited arguments but they only stand up because your team structure never plays and therefore never loses. But, as it never plays, it doesn't win either!!!

[Thracian]

Thracian, there are supporters at every club in Britain and at all standards who believe in your football philosophy. Just suppose for one moment that every one of those clubs adopted your approach. There would still be winners and there would still be losers. It is because no team will ever be equal to another that the novel concept of tactics became prevalent. I take my hat off to you for your spirited arguments but they only stand up because your team structure never plays and therefore never loses. But, as it never plays, it doesn't win either!!!

An interesting theory but you know and I know that people are not all mentally geared towards attacking. They would need a personality transplant.

[Thracian]

I don't mean to have a go, but your just over complicating the whole concept of football. Like Rob Kelly says, it's a simple game...You score more goals then your opponents.

Unlike Kelly I actually believe that, while the concept of football is simple (scoring more goals than the opposition) the manner of achieving that goal consistently is extraordinarily complex. Indeed it is a national scandal in my view that so many of the supposedly most intelligent people in our schools were forced to play rugby (a relatively simple game played through 180 degrees instead of a full 360 degrees) instead of football.

[Sir Fynwy]

Unlike Kelly I actually believe that, while the concept of football is simple (scoring more goals than the opposition) the manner of achieving that goal consistently is extraordinarily complex. Indeed it is a national scandal in my view that so many of the supposedly most intelligent people in our schools were forced to play rugby (a relatively simple game played through 180 degrees instead of a full 360 degrees) instead of football.

What a boring man you are , play a new tune or shut up.

[Thracian]

What a boring man you are , play a new tune or shut up.

A rugby player perhaps?

[davieG]

Unlike Kelly I actually believe that, while the concept of football is simple (scoring more goals than the opposition) the manner of achieving that goal consistently is extraordinarily complex. Indeed it is a national scandal in my view that so many of the supposedly most intelligent people in our schools were forced to play rugby (a relatively simple game played through 180 degrees instead of a full 360 degrees) instead of football.

I never ever saw a football, never mind kick one at school, it was Rugby all the way and I was ALWAYS put in as a hooker, being one of the smallest / youngest. That was all down to having a Welshman, Sell Infano Hopkins (sp)as the Deputy Head, he was also the Tiger's comnmentator on Radio Leicester.

It took me years to get any sort of enjoyment out of watching Rugby after that and I really didn't get the chance to play football, apart from the occasional 2/3 boy kick about until I left school.

[Sir Fynwy]

A rugby player perhaps?

Played a bit, but moved to footy, still doesn't make any of your crap arguements less boring though.