Favouritism

[Grewks]

The number reason why Pearson may find himself out of a job very soon!

Whether gallagher is fit or not his performances have been woeful, so why does gally deserve to be in the side?? He was taken off early against Brum, without him on the pitch we played much better, but yet again he retains his place in the side for no reason. Gally's lack of width allow teams the extra man to mark dyer and leave him ineffective.

Same with Wellens, yes he made a few tackles today but was at fault for at least one goal. The captians role is to organise and lead by example, his performance today reminded me of the good old stephen clemence. Stand in the center circle and tell players who to mark, when the only thing Richie himself is marking is the center spot.

Why Dyer, our only (arguably slightly effective) winger was put into the middle, while Schlupp was played outside confused me greatly. At the point the score was 3-1 everyone, including the chelsea fans, thought there would be ending of predominantly leicester, but thanks to this lack of positional awareness we had beckford, dyer and schlupp getting in others way.

The frustrating point for me was that I feel the draw was within our grasp, it could have been 5-2 or 5-5, but 2 goals at Stamford Bridge is great, the problem was our defending which let us down greatly. Sol Bamba (love the guy) was always caught out of the position, he left cahill free for the first, and morgan 1v1 with Torres for the second. Please, if your gonna try Marshall and Dyer as center forwards, peltier as a defensive midfielder, ledge as a right back aswell as Nugent and Schlupp as wingers, try Bamba in defensive midfield.

Why Pearson believed it was a good idea to give away the midfield avantage of 5v4 in the first place I do not know. Who goes to Chelsea playing 4-4-2? There is a reason this formation is rarely played. I want to see something different. 4-4-2 is a bore and is the reason it is used very rarely.

What I would have picked....

......................................Kasper............................................

Peltier................Ledger...............Morgan..........................Konch

........................................Bamba.................................................

........................................Danns (free role)

Dyer..............................Marshall (free role)........................Nugent

.....................................Beckford................................................

All season we have been calling for a strong Defensive Midfielder, Bamba would be the ideal solution. Thought Nugent did very well down the line and skinned Bosingwa, Ivanovic and Luiz all day long. Danns was just class, prevented goals, assisted goals .....what more do you want? Also thought marshall was impressive when he came on, looked like he was capable of playing the 'Mata/Silva role' behind the striker.

Please Nige, no more 4-4-2. We do not have the wingers or strikers to play this boring and uninspiring formation.

Also take some advice from the 'sporting behaviour' of chelsea. Were too nice, when you give a free kick away dont just let them take it/argue with the ref. Stand in front of the ball or throw the ball between 3 players (highly amused me when chelsea did this today yet no-one realised. For their second goal when Torres outpaced wellens and left us 1v2, just stick a leg out bring him down and accept the yellow. We need for fight like men, danns leads by example in this area, we are 'too soft'.

[THEFATBASTARD]

Self deception is a sad thing, to believe we could of got a draw today is delusion...no matter what system or personnel we put out, chelsea had too much for us, fact. they were in second gear and cruise control, look who they could of put on the pitch .please face the truth..there is no shame in being beaten by better players, nitpicking here and there is pointless.....In a way, today was a good thing ,cos there will be no more delusions of grandeur from anybody connected with our club.There is an awful lot of work to do. more sackings is NOT the answer at this time.

[FuriousFox46]

Shut up.

[roblcfc84]

To be fair we played fairly well. But Chelsea let us have the ball and play in front of them, they were never under pressure for any great length of time. Suggesting Pearson is to blame for today's result is a bit unfair given the opposition.

[crisp packet]

Self deception is a sad thing, to believe we could of got a draw today is delusion...no matter what system or personal we put out, chelsea had too much for us, fact. they were in second gear and cruise control, look who they could of put on the pitch .please face the truth..there is no shame in being beaten by better players, nitpicking here and there is pointless.....In a way, today was a good thing ,cos there will be no more delusions of grandeur from anybody connected with our club.There is an awful lot of work to do. more sackings is NOT the answer at this time.

Good post !! THIS

[blueharmie]

Chelsea are far better than we have and I may add ever will be. No one could have matched that except for a few teams in the prem. as lets be honest they weren't even trying that hard.

[cc_star]

NP is ahead of you, he's already replaced them with two young players who'll grow into the roles.

Patience people patience. We've gone down the buying success route & it didn't work, now we're building & growing it, which takes time.

Gally was doing ok before his back injury, Marshall came in did OK, then not so good, Gally come back in & still appears to be injured... Marshall will play there in the future, but he's not totally ready. Wouldn't be surprised if Gally is out again for a while. But some of our fans negativity & personal abuse to 'one of our own' is disgraceful.

Wellens was good today after the first 20mins, when him & Danns were made fools of by Mata (one of Europe's top players) is he slotted no end of balls down the channels once Nuge & Beckford decided they wanted to play & made rules & themselves available for passes, before that they were happy to be marked out the game.

There will be changes in the future, NP has already got potential replacements for them signed in Marshall & Drinkwater but whilst they're stepping up there's not a lot we can do other than support the team.

[Mark_w]

Also take some advice from the 'sporting behaviour' of chelsea. Were too nice, when you give a free kick away dont just let them take it/argue with the ref. Stand in front of the ball or throw the ball between 3 players (highly amused me when chelsea did this today yet no-one realised. For their second goal when Torres outpaced wellens and left us 1v2, just stick a leg out bring him down and accept the yellow. We need for fight like men, danns leads by example in this area, we are 'too soft'.

We have practically the worst discipline in the Championship, it's been a major problem which has denied us points this season, don't think you can really suggest we need to be more aggressive. You also have a go at Wellens and suggest he was responsible for one of the goals, yet your team would include Sol Bamba, responsible for at least two of the goals today in his place. Wellens does what you suggest we need to do regarding fighting, for example bringing down Torres in the first couple of minutes, and gives Danns the freedom to do what he has been doing for us.

4-3-3 wasn't really much of an option due to a lack of available midfielders, Wellens had to start for this reason because frankly Bamba in midfield is not an experiment we should be trying in an FA Cup Quater-Final against Chelsea, it's the sort of thing we can try when the Play-Offs go out of the window mathmatically. Nigel Pearson has done a good job since coming back, a number of Sven's players who looked shocking under him are beggining to look like Leicester players under Nige (St. Ledger, Danns, Beckford). Not to mention the fact that the only reason we got to go to Stamford Bridge today is because he took the cup seriously from the word go and managed a great win over Norwich. Why do people always have to find something to moan about, give NP the summer and I'm sure we'll look a much better side than we looked at the start of this campaign.

[Libertine Dream]

You mean what you would have picked in hindsight. Considering Marshall's form and the fact he's never played there you would no way have started with that. NP could come on here and say what he would have done in hindsight. Ideally we'd have scored more than them, football is that simple.

[Grewks]

So you believe 4-4-2 was the correct formation?? No-one plays 2 strikers against chelsea at stamford bridge, especially not at the start of the game. Yes, i do blame nigel pearson, whilst it is true that the quality Chelsea have would have been a struggle in any situation, this formation led to us being overrun in midfield, against a vastly superior team.

Why place schlupp, nugent, ledger and peltier in unnatural positions, against Chelsea of all sides. To say we were totally outplayed would be silly, had we been more clinical, something which Leicester, no matter what strikeforce, never are, we would have forced a replay.

Bamba is our equivalent of Luiz, always out of position for a center half and should not play there, yes Bamba may have made the errors for 2 of their goals, but it was Luiz's poor defending which resulted in our goals.

Nugent on the left looks more threatening than any of our wingers, and also looks to get more involved in the game rather than playing upfront with a striker who plays a similar role.

[Mark_w]

So you believe 4-4-2 was the correct formation?? No-one plays 2 strikers against chelsea at stamford bridge, especially not at the start of the game. Yes, i do blame nigel pearson, whilst it is true that the quality Chelsea have would have been a struggle in any situation, this formation led to us being overrun in midfield, against a vastly superior team.

Why place schlupp, nugent, ledger and peltier in unnatural positions, against Chelsea of all sides. To say we were totally outplayed would be silly, had we been more clinical, something which Leicester, no matter what strikeforce, never are, we would have forced a replay.

Bamba is our equivalent of Luiz, always out of position for a center half and should not play there, yes Bamba may have made the errors for 2 of their goals, but it was Luiz's poor defending which resulted in our goals.

Nugent on the left looks more threatening than any of our wingers, and also looks to get more involved in the game rather than playing upfront with a striker who plays a similar role.

We had two natural central midfielders available so we where going to have to play someone out of position to play 4-3-3 (Now is not the time to experiment with Bamba whose natural position is CB and that's the position he wants to play in). So either we where going to have to play someone out of position or play 4-4-2. And Nugent on the left doesn't look more threatening than Dyer in that position at all, at least not as threatening as Dyer has looked in recent weeks or previous big games (Leeds - Home, Man City - Away, for example).

No one was complaining with St. Ledger at RB last week, in fact I remmeber everyone stating how much better he was than Peltier had been recently, not to mention the fact you claim that Nugent looks dangerous on the left-wing and should have started in that position whilst also having a go at Nigel Pearson for putting him there!

[HoustonFox]

Bamba is our equivalent of Luiz, always out of position for a center half and should not play there, yes Bamba may have made the errors for 2 of their goals, but it was Luiz's poor defending which resulted in our goals.

So because Luis made mistakes for them we should play Bamba in midfield? That makes no sense. If anything, if you played a formation with a holding midfielder and put Bamba there we'd be even more exposed. If he has no discipline at CB why would he sit if he was a CDM?

[hackneyfox]

Gallagher shouldn't have been picked.

He's then taken off and Peltier put on.

SSL still continues as rb

Dyer is played in the middle

Shlupp out wide

So many strange decisions.

Get rid

[Kitchandro]

To be fair we played fairly well. But Chelsea let us have the ball and play in front of them, they were never under pressure for any great length of time. Suggesting Pearson is to blame for today's result is a bit unfair given the opposition.

No we didn't. We gave Chelsea about 4 goals. We rarely delivered a dangerous ball into the box or tested Cech, two goals aside.

I'm not expecting us to beat Chelsea but we can play a lot better than we did today. If we played like that in a Championship match (and sadly we have too many times this season) I'd expect us to lose.

We don't have a great squad of players but tactically we made errors today too - St Ledger at right back, playing a high line, not dealing with set pieces, etc.

[lrs80]

sorry but as soon as i heard gally was playing i feared the worst ,he just doesnt offer enough and if np keeps on playing him he will get the boot im afraid,he was involved in both of there goals,im sorry but im sick of it now im as why he cant see how gally is such a weak link i mean against brum as soon as gally went off and marshall came on we destroyed brum ,i know marshall hasnt had the best of starts but gally is just dreadful and if any leic fan on here disagrees please explain why cause it seems pretty simple 2 me.

[acooling08]

OK So I'll give you that Gally was shit and shouldn't have started - Marshall looked good coming on.

But Pearson very quickly recognised that we were getting overun in midifield so he brought on Peltier. Good subs from Nigel too.

I do think that Chelsea's front 3 were outstanding. We had no chance today regardless of the team/formation.

[LCFC_FAN_1995]

Please Nige, no more 4-4-2. We do not have the wingers or strikers to play this boring and uninspiring formation.

So You wouldn't class Marshall and Dyer as wingers?

Beckford, Schlupp and Nugent are they not strikers then?

[inckley fox]

This is the problem with the anti-Pearson sentiment; too much of it is simply wrong.

You'd have two midfielders (one of which is a winger) in a 'free role' in a three man midfield unit? Meanwhile you'd stick our top scorer out wide and go for the formation which has yielded five points in the eight matches it's been used (three of which came when we were down to ten men and actually playing a four man midfield).

Your solution for Bamba looking awful is to play him out of position just because, well, they had a guy in a similar position and he gave away two goals too. As for no-one playing 4-4-2 - that's also wrong. Most of the continent's best teams prefer a variation on 4-3-3, but nearly all of them revert to 4-4-2 from time to time. At a quick glance, I'd say over half of the Premiership's teams start with it and the majority of the sides promoted in recent seasons have used it, with a couple of exceptions.

I've already said this on another thread, but if you look at the points we won with 4-4-2, 4-1-2-1-2 and 3-5-2 (1.7 per game) it suggests that our tinkering with 4-3-3 has been responsible for our league position. Yes, it's a nice formation when it works, but with us it simply doesn't. Some people never learn...

[Criggers]

I'm pretty sure the boring and uninspiring formation of 4-4-2 has Man Utd sitting pretty at the top of the PL. You sound like you've been listening to too much RL and Alan Young, claiming none of the top teams have real wingers anymore. Please.

The only thing I would agree with is that Gallagher probably shouldn't have started but I doubt that NP was too excited at the thought of such an inexperienced Marshall starting against Chelsea. I think we looked star struck for the first 20 mins and that awful start is what ultimately cost us.

[Reynard Bleu]

Too many errors, too many players seemed nervous and rushed, no one but a foot on the ball first half. Defensive errors again, they have done for us in the Championship this season and yesterday a top drawer side took full advantage. Effort can't be faulted but application was not good enough agaisnt a side with so many good players/

[chris_lcfc_85]

NP is ahead of you, he's already replaced them with two young players who'll grow into the roles.

Patience people patience. We've gone down the buying success route & it didn't work, now we're building & growing it, which takes time.

Gally was doing ok before his back injury, Marshall came in did OK, then not so good, Gally come back in & still appears to be injured... Marshall will play there in the future, but he's not totally ready. Wouldn't be surprised if Gally is out again for a while. But some of our fans negativity & personal abuse to 'one of our own' is disgraceful.

Wellens was good today after the first 20mins, when him & Danns were made fools of by Mata (one of Europe's top players) is he slotted no end of balls down the channels once Nuge & Beckford decided they wanted to play & made rules & themselves available for passes, before that they were happy to be marked out the game.

There will be changes in the future, NP has already got potential replacements for them signed in Marshall & Drinkwater but whilst they're stepping up there's not a lot we can do other than support the team.

SPOT ON....

[cosmos]

NP is ahead of you, he's already replaced them with two young players who'll grow into the roles.

Patience people patience. We've gone down the buying success route & it didn't work, now we're building & growing it, which takes time.

Gally was doing ok before his back injury, Marshall came in did OK, then not so good, Gally come back in & still appears to be injured... Marshall will play there in the future, but he's not totally ready. Wouldn't be surprised if Gally is out again for a while. But some of our fans negativity & personal abuse to 'one of our own' is disgraceful.

Wellens was good today after the first 20mins, when him & Danns were made fools of by Mata (one of Europe's top players) is he slotted no end of balls down the channels once Nuge & Beckford decided they wanted to play & made rules & themselves available for passes, before that they were happy to be marked out the game.

There will be changes in the future, NP has already got potential replacements for them signed in Marshall & Drinkwater but whilst they're stepping up there's not a lot we can do other than support the team.

I just don't know how any fan with a knowledge of football could say wellens played well today, he let the chelsea players just breeze past him without as much as a challenge, he was slow and not nearly physical enough-it was like men against boys, i love my team but but that doesn't mean i'm going to be deluded by their shortcomings, am i allowed to say nuge has been quite poor for the last few games?

[Jimbo]

Hold on, the FA are on the phone

They've realised that you're a tactical genius and want to offer you the England job

One thing in the original post that does strike me, you go on about a lack of positional awareness and then you want to play 2 central midfielders in free roles? Leaving Bamba as your holding midfielder horribly exposed for Mata and Meireles to destroy him. Forget 5-2 your team would have seen us leak 8 or 9

[Greg2607]

The speed at which Chelsea broke caused us the most issues, that's the beauty of a 4-2-3-1 I guess, you can afford to leave a couple of players high and wide to receive the ball. The number of times that they got in behind us because of the speed of turnaround was crazy.

4-4-2 WAS the wrong formation to play against that formation, but it was an option that our team were comfortable in playing. We had two options yesterday, shut up shop, park the bus, and Pray that we got towards the end of the game at 0-0 and snatch a win, or, take the game too them, and try to create enough opportunities to win the game.

I think the unfortunate thing for us, (and I think this was mainly due to the gulf in class of the players involved) was that we didn't get tight enough to the chelsea players, early enough in any of their attacking movements, which means that we were never going to be defensively robust enough to keep them at bay. Their movement off the ball and ability to spot (and execute!!) and early pass was ultimately what beat us.

Welcome to what life would be like in the premier league if we made it to the "hallowed ground".