The "do they mean us?" thread

[fox_favourite]

11 hours ago, davieG said:

PAUL MERSON COLUMN:

LEICESTER can be proud of their Champions League push – but I think players will leave the club now they’re out.

Riyad Mahrez and Kasper Schmeichel are wanted by other teams and I think they’ll move on.

Those players stuck around for the Champions League and now they’ve had a taste of top European action, they’ll want it again next season.

Leicester won’t get relegated. No chance. But I don’t see them finishing in the top six. They will have some rebuilding to do. Fair play for what they’ve done in Europe, though.

You have to give them full credit, because they gave Atletico Madrid a scare.

Atletico are one of the best teams around but Leicester were right in that tie and they never gave up. That’s the Leicester we all loved last season.

Arsenal just rolled over in the Champions League. Leicester didn’t – and they deserved to be the last team standing from England.

It will get tougher next season but I think they will be all right.

These comments i can understand more, and partly agree. It's my concern, however much players love being here, that they will now have a taste for the European football and will want it more. People like Kasper and Drinky who aren't getting any younger and who i can imagine are hungry for success. Mahrez is different as I've always thought he'd leave in the summer anyway. But I think Gray just needs to be more consistent, he could be a ready made replacement. Kasper will be the hardest to replace. Young talented keepers are hard to come by and, if you do, lure them away from their current club. 

 

He's right Top 6 will be a tough ask, but if we do things right, we could be one of those teams that are always there or there abouts. This summer will be big for us on the recruitment side 

[Finnegan]

When will people realise Adrian Durham is just like the Onion or Newsthump.

 

It's part spoof, part trolling.

 

Stop taking him seriously.

[Dan LCFC]

19 hours ago, Ted Maul said:

Durham is usually okay with us, so I assume he's just using that angle to rile people up. I remember a couple of weeks ago when they did a debate on whether fans of other teams wanted Leicester to win in the Champions League, and the most bitter, whiny Spurs fan called up saying that nobody respected Leicester in Europe because of where we are in the league, but everyone respected Spurs- he literally just laughed him off the air. 

 

 

As for Souness- the bloke is an absolute dildo. He hated us winning the league, slated us and predicted us to drop off week after week in the title run in. He then had to sit there and praise us after we won it and Spurs imploded because if he said otherwise, he would have looked like even more of a simpleton than usual.

Yeah Durham usually defends us to be fair, it's wrong that he's anti-Leicester, although he was definitely in wind-up mode there. I do think they open up some interesting debate at times and Durham's grown on me because he does have the balls to call people out that plenty don't. He does ruin it though.

 

Souness lost any credibility when he put 9 Spurs players in his team of the year last season. It's so biased it's unprofessional. Even the biggest Spurs fan in the world couldn't leave out any of Vardy, Mahrez or Kante last year. Made me laugh how people used to pick Spurs' whole back four as well.

[Dan LCFC]

3 hours ago, fox_favourite said:

I laughed my way through most of this. He contradicts himself by saying we should be ashamed to go out in the quarter finals, yet says there's no disgrace going out to Athletico Madrid?! 

 

Also, comparing us to other teams is a kind of compliment, but a back handed one. What he doesn't mention is budgets. These teams have a bigger budget and spend £££ on players.

 

Moaning about our tactics? But didn't we score and had worried when we changed to a target man up front? They are used to playing against passing football style, that's why they can defend it so well. They weren't used to playing against that system so it put them on the back foot. Surely that was a good tactical move? If we played the passing or "sexy football" that he is suggesting Madrid would have just closed the space and not let it happen. And anyway, it wasn't all just hoof ball. I thought we opened them up more with on the wings. 

 

Bizarre comments from an arrogant man. He reminds me of Katie Hopkins, who justs says things to be controversial and to get in the news. Shows lack of intelligence to me. 

He's got to be on the wind up. He always lays into people who get uppity about style of play.

 

Anyone who criticises our style of play in that second half is a snob. I'm sorry but they are. We completely dominated them that half. What are we meant to do? Just keep doing what isn't working?

 

And it's OK measuring us by "they won the league last year" but I'd say Man City spending **** knows how much and losing to Monaco, Spurs failing to get out of a group of Monaco, Leverkusen and CSKA Moscow, Arsenal getting absolutely torn to shreds, Man Utd stumbling past Championship-budget level sides and Southampton / West Ham being knocked out by nobodies in the Europa League is far more worthy of being criticised. If we had drawn Man City in the quarters, who would've been the favourites? Man City, obviously.

 

We have over-achieved. We are the only ones in England in Europe to do that.

[Livid]

I can't find a link but Jim Holden is showing The Expess's usual bile and bitterness towards us in his column this morning.

[Claridge]

10 hours ago, fox_favourite said:

These comments i can understand more, and partly agree. It's my concern, however much players love being here, that they will now have a taste for the European football and will want it more. People like Kasper and Drinky who aren't getting any younger and who i can imagine are hungry for success. Mahrez is different as I've always thought he'd leave in the summer anyway. But I think Gray just needs to be more consistent, he could be a ready made replacement. Kasper will be the hardest to replace. Young talented keepers are hard to come by and, if you do, lure them away from their current club. 

 

He's right Top 6 will be a tough ask, but if we do things right, we could be one of those teams that are always there or there abouts. This summer will be big for us on the recruitment side 

Drinkwater sign for a champions league team? Better hope the scouts have missed the last 4 months because he has shown next to nothing to warrant a move. Delighted if we could off load him for decent money

[Lovejoy]

9 minutes ago, Claridge said:

Drinkwater sign for a champions league team? Better hope the scouts have missed the last 4 months because he has shown next to nothing to warrant a move. Delighted if we could off load him for decent money

Write a player off based on four months. Good work.

[Ted Maul]

6 hours ago, Dan LCFC said:

Souness lost any credibility when he put 9 Spurs players in his team of the year last season. It's so biased it's unprofessional. Even the biggest Spurs fan in the world couldn't leave out any of Vardy, Mahrez or Kante last year. Made me laugh how people used to pick Spurs' whole back four as well.

Yeah, that looked pretty ridiculous when they finished third.

 

There's so much football snobbery within the sporting media- I don't think there were many journalists/pundits who weren't resentful or patronising towards us in some way during our title or Champions League runs.

[st albans fox]

8 minutes ago, Lovejoy said:

Write a player off based on four months. Good work.

You mean one carrying a injury that probably requires an op ? 

[m4DD0gg]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

You mean one carrying a injury that probably requires an op ? 

Will still pit suitors off. How many times do we see the huge teams spend a fortune on a player who has an amazing season and then is shit the next. Most big teams are reactive e.g. Chelsea.

[Facecloth]

2 hours ago, m4DD0gg said:

Will still pit suitors off. How many times do we see the huge teams spend a fortune on a player who has an amazing season and then is shit the next. Most big teams are reactive e.g. Chelsea.

Not just after an amazing season, big clubs have spent millions seemingly based on players performances in few games at a World Cup or Euros.

[m4DD0gg]

3 minutes ago, Facecloth said:

Not just after an amazing season, big clubs have spent millions seemingly based on players performances in few games at a World Cup or Euros.

That too.

[crisp packet]

1 hour ago, Facecloth said:

Not just after an amazing season, big clubs have spent millions seemingly based on players performances in few games at a World Cup or Euros.

Kapustka  ?

[davieG]

Quote

 

Overreaction Tuesday - Week 37

Tuesday, May 16, 2017
 

  

 

Remember those naive days of August and September 2016? Somehow, we talked ourselves into the notion that this was going to be the most competitive Premier League season on record.  There were an overabundence of world class managers.  Manchester City and Manchester United spent huge to start addressing flawed squads.  The stink of Jose Mourinho, Part Deux was off at Chelsea.  Heck, even the mid-table clubs were throwing money around on big name players with the promise of a "next Leicester City" rising from the funds provided by new TV contracts.  

 

Like the big build up to a top of the table clash that ends up as a cautious affair with more cards than shots, it didn't quite live up to the hype, did it?  As we approach the last few matches of Week 37 and anticipate the final day of the season there really isn't much left to play for.  We have known for quite some time and with only a few occasional hiccups of faith that Chelsea were going to win the title with at least a couple of matches to spare.  As is regularly the case, it would end up being the relegation battle and the race for the remaining three Champions League spots that would really keep our attention over the last few weeks but, alas, even that failed to materialize.  Hull City and Marco Silva didn't quite have enough to overcome the mismanagement disaster that was the first half of the season.  Liverpool and Manchester City went against recent type and were on the fortunate end of some odd bounces as they solidified top four places almost to the point of certainty.  Arsenal are charging hard but if City and Liverpool do what they're supposed to do over their final matches then nothing that the Gunners do will make the final six days of the season any more dramatic.  

 

Before we buy in to the narrative that this wasn't a very good season, let's not succumb to recency bias and the myths created by recency bias.  There have been lots of great stories and hopefully you will find your way to one or more of the excellent video retrospectives of the season sure to be produced over the next few days and into Sunday as we wish the 2016-17 season a fond farewell.  Before we wave goodbye to the season, I'd like to comment on two of the stories that somehow seem to have stayed out of the mainstream conversation this season. Both, not surprisingly, involve Jose Mourinho despite the fact that he has orchestrated what would be a fairly unremarkable season at Old Trafford if his name (and that of Zlatan) weren't attached to it. 

 

Conte is Winning with Mourinho's Team

The popular description of what Antonio Conte has done this season is that he has won with essentially the same team that finished 10th last season.  I understand that it is fun to point out how much better Eden Hazard, Cesc Fabregas, Nemanja Matic, Thibaut Coutrois, and Diego Costa have played under Conte than they did under Mourinho last season.  If Mourinho delighted in tweaking everyone on his way up to the managerial mountaintop, it is karmic justice that similar shots get leveled at him as he stumbles down the opposite side of that mountain.  But really? How is it that Chelsea can spend over £100 million on four players, three of whom played nearly every match, and the manager gets credit for getting players with a track record of world class performance to live up to what we know they are capable of.  

 

Chelsea added the 2015-16 Player of the Year and two other very strong starters to a team that was talented enough to win the Premier League in 2014-15.  The core of the team - Hazard, Courtois, Matic, Azpilicueta, Willian, and Costa - are still firmly in the prime of their respective careers.  No doubt that Conte did a nice job fitting a style to the talent on hand.  Using a 3 man central defense helped mask the error-prone ways of both David Luiz and Gary Cahill while letting Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso, neither exceptional defenders, do what they do best in wide spaces.  Still, it seems that the most important thing that Antonio Conte brought to the Blues this season was not being Jose Mourinho.  Removing whatever poisonous atmosphere was created last season and getting his exceptional talents back to their best was his greatest achievement.  

 

Perhaps the best way to summarize my point is that if the 2015-16 season had never happened, would you have been surprised to wake up and find that Chelsea had won a Premier League title with their 2014-15 core of stars plus bringing in the reigning (people's) Player of the Year despite having a different manager?  I sure wouldn't.  Honor Antonio Conte for what he has accomplished but let's not make it out to be a shock that he came out on top with exceptional talent.

 

Claudio Ranieri: This Season's Mourinho

Personality, and what of that personality the media decide to portray of a public figure, goes so far in how we think of that figure that public figure that it can obscure some difficult questions.  A little over a year ago, the second Jose Mourinho era was imploding at Chelsea amid accusations of player revolt.  I'm sure there are people who know exactly what went on behind the scenes that led a number of important players to appear to quit on Mourinho.  I'm not one of those people in the know so I'm not going to speculate on exactly what the dynamics were.  What I can say with certainty is that the character that Jose Mourinho has created for himself in the media and the one the media has willingly embraced made it incredibly easy to create narratives around Mourinho being primarily, if not exclusively, at fault for what went on.  The "Mourinho Must Go" stories were flying fast and furious as if he were his long-time foil Arsene Wenger and there was no outrage at the injustice of it all.  The media had their villain and the narrative nearly created itself.  

 

Fast forward one season and we encounter Claudio Ranieri in almost exactly the same situation.  The team that he had won the championship, and not only A Championship but one of the most improbable championships of all time in any sport, were imploding.  There were rumbles of the players revolting behind the scenes with Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez playing the parts of Diego Costa and Eden Hazard from the Mourinho saga.  No, there were no public incidents of the Eva Carneiro variety that could act as a touchpoint to turn the masses against Ranieri but the rest of the circumstances were shockingly similar.  

 

From this vantage point, the biggest difference between the two situations is the underlying character that the media had built up during the championship season and how ready it was to be assaulted.  Whereas Jose Mourinho had willingly taken up a prickly, arrogant "us/me against the world" mentality, Claudio Ranieri was cast in a kind, grandfatherly way.  Where Mourinho's press conferences gave no quarter and asked none Ranieri's history as an OK manager at Chelsea and overall demeanor was respectful, friendly and occasionally playful.  The media aren't stupid, they know that you can write a brutal takedown on the arrogant one but you don't write scathing takedown pieces on a kindly grandfather who just achieved a dream result.  

 

I'm not meaning to imply that beneath that grandfatherly exterior that Claudio Ranieri is a Mourinho-like figure but I'm pretty sure that nowhere in the world has a professional football manager gotten to the top flight in their country by consistently being the character that Claudio Ranieri played in news conferences.  Managing a team in a top flight athletic endeavor requires that you be incredibly demanding of yourself and your players as you strive against other incredibly talented people to achieve a goal that only one can achieve.  What we've seen from the Foxes under Craig Shakespeare tells us that somewhere along the line, Claudio Ranieri clearly lost his locker room as surely as Jose Mourinho did the season before.  The fact that no one spent nearly the time digging into what exactly went on at Leicester City as they did at Chelsea the season before is a testament to the power of the media figure jointly created by manager and press.  The power of that image is why Jose Mourinho is largely blamed for the messes at Chelsea (which, in fairness, do seem to be mostly his fault) and Manchester United (which probably isn't to nearly the extent he's taking the blame) while Ranieri seems to have avoided the blame for the relegation form he was overseeing with the Foxes. 

 

http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/bpl/72145/375/overreaction-tuesday---week-37

 

 

[the fox]

"The fact that no one spent nearly the time digging into what exactly went on at Leicester City as they did at Chelsea the season before is a testament to the power of the media figure jointly created by manager and press.  The power of that image is why Jose Mourinho is largely blamed for the messes at Chelsea (which, in fairness, do seem to be mostly his fault) and Manchester United (which probably isn't to nearly the extent he's taking the blame) while Ranieri seems to have avoided the blame for the relegation form he was overseeing with the Foxes"

 

this☝hit the nail on the head for me, every story needs a bad guy, and Claudio was too nice to be blamed so it had to be the ??? in the club

[urban.spaceman]

Leicester can still avoid consigning themselves to history for the worst defence of a title in the Premier League

• Samuel Lovett
• Tuesday 16 May 2017 14:57 BST

Should the Foxes finish in eighth this season then Chelsea will still hold the unwanted accolade for the worst defence of a Premier League title after their disastrous 2015/16 campaign

Click to follow

 

Leicester's players after the defeat at Manchester City Getty

After defying 5000-1 odds last year, Leicester City looked set to become the first top-flight champions in 79 years to be relegated after finding themselves dragged into the battle for survival earlier this season.

But after a brutal change in management, with Craig Shakespeare stepping in for the ousted Claudio Ranieri, Leicester’s season took an upturn in fortune.

A run of six wins on the trot, an impressive Champions League campaign and the guarantee of Premier League status have all followed since Ranieri’s dismissal.

Leicester City celebrate Premier League title

Perhaps most impressively, the Foxes still have the chance to avoid consigning themselves to the history books for the worst defence of a title in the Premier League era.

That unwanted accolade currently belongs to current champions Chelsea.

After lifting the trophy on Jose Mourinho’s return in the 2014/15 season, the Blues went on to implode in the following campaign and, like Leicester, parted ways with their title-winning manager.

Picking up 50 points across the term, Chelsea eventually finished 10th with their title defence in tatters.

Leicester may be unable to surpass the Blues’ point haul but, with two games of the season to go, the former champions still have the chance to finish in eighth.

The Foxes welcome Tottenham and Bournemouth to the King Power in their final games of the term, with six points and the prospect of a 49-point haul on offer.

West Brom and Southampton, both of whom sit above Leicester in eighth and ninth respectively, still have Manchester City and United to play before the final day of the season while the Cherries have just one game left of their campaign – against Leicester on Sunday.

 

Should the above results go Leicester’s way, and assuming the Foxes manage to upset Tottenham on Thursday night, Shakespeare’s men will stand to finish in eighth – one spot off Europe – when they take on Bournemouth in five days’ time.

Quite the result for a side tipped to drop down into the Championship midway through the season.

That’s the Premier League for you.

• More about:
• Leicester City
• Premier League

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http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/leicester-vs-bournemouth-premier-league-history-maker-champions-defence-chelsea-a7738801.html

[davieG]

Anthony Knockaert tops Sky Bet EFL play-off 'heartbreak' poll

 

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/10880361/anthony-knockaert-tops-sky-bet-efl-play-off-heartbreak-poll

[Arriba Los Zorros]

2 minutes ago, davieG said:

Anthony Knockaert tops Sky Bet EFL play-off 'heartbreak' poll

 

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/10880361/anthony-knockaert-tops-sky-bet-efl-play-off-heartbreak-poll

Reading the article and seeing a pic of Knocky crying still brings back the feeling vividly...... Don't read!!

[Finnegan]

33 minutes ago, Arriba Los Zorros said:

Reading the article and seeing a pic of Knocky crying still brings back the feeling vividly...... Don't read!!

 

Yeah but it also reminds me that we've won the Premier League whilst Watford consider a play off semi final in the second tier to be the greatest moment in their history.

 

Swings and roundabouts.

[Ted Maul]

4 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

Yeah but it also reminds me that we've won the Premier League whilst Watford consider a play off semi final in the second tier to be the greatest moment in their history.

 

Swings and roundabouts.

It's funny, I watched the highlights again before we played Watford and found myself smiling when Deeney scored. That day at Vicarage Road really was the making of that group of players- the mental strength and determination to succeed which it gave them ultimately carried us through to the Premier League title. 

 

Horrible at the time, but one of the most important moments in our history- who knows how we would have got on if we went up that season?

[Finnegan]

22 minutes ago, Ted Maul said:

It's funny, I watched the highlights again before we played Watford and found myself smiling when Deeney scored. That day at Vicarage Road really was the making of that group of players- the mental strength and determination to succeed which it gave them ultimately carried us through to the Premier League title. 

 

Horrible at the time, but one of the most important moments in our history- who knows how we would have got on if we went up that season?

 

We'd have just won the Prem a year earlier imhfo

[AylestoneRaider]

On 23/04/2017 at 09:44, st albans fox said:

You mean one carrying a injury that probably requires an op ? 

I can't honestly believe the attitude of a few people to Drinky. Played with an injury for 4 months and some people want to offload him. Absurd.

[Jimmy]

3 hours ago, AylestoneRaider said:

I can't honestly believe the attitude of a few people to Drinky. Played with an injury for 4 months and some people want to offload him. Absurd.

if his injury was affecting him that much he should have made it clear he wasn't fit to play, once he is on the pitch you judge him as normal

[sylofox]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

if his injury was affecting him that much he should have made it clear he wasn't fit to play, once he is on the pitch you judge him as normal

or the club still thought he was our best option for survival. But didn't want to release it as everyone would have known he was the weak link.

[ARM1968]

Drinks is quality. Will be instrumental in next seasons title win.