Leicester City (A) | PL | Post Match Thread

cheekybids said:
I’ll look out for that. I was made up he scored.
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Watch him constantly looking over his shoulder, dropping and sliding inside to cover the longer ball into midfield, while giving up the ball to the defender.

Once the pass has been made, he often comes forward to close him down, but it’s certainly not a traditional press.
 
wattle said:
Pep seemed to tweak a bit today. We seemed to relinquish possession a bit more and defend a bit deeper.
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I thought so too, the number of times you looked at the defence and it was a flat back four, rather than three and Lewis out of position. Two banks of four even. Maybe I haven't noticed before but it looked like we were much more stable and, a few chances aside, it worked well on reducing my blood pressure. Let somebody else fuck around outside the penalty box without any chance of scoring for a change. Win win.
 
The biggest issue does seem to be off the ball and because of the possession based style of play they have to press from the front relentlessly. They seem to be confused on when to press and where to press. And the midfield is not squeezing their midfield enough so even when we force a tight pass out of the back their midfielders consistently had time to receive and turn, which is where the problems start.
 
Tolmie scores said:
His passing and touch when he has played (post charity shield where he was great) has been poor = led Pep not to trust him. Im a fan of the lad but can see his confidence evaporated for the minutes when he's been on - at top level you don't get too many chances - playing a poor pass in the middle of the pitch like he did in chumps league - in any prem league game often results in a goal conceded. To me it just looked like Pep lost a bit of faith in him sadly - better today - onwards and upwards ..come on McAtee lets do it again!
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Yes. Doing it again is what counts.
 
Didn't have chance to watch the game but just watched highlights, still not at our fluent best but exactly the result we needed going into the new year. I hope that this result can serve as a catalyst to get us going again in the new year with players back from injury and maybe a couple of new signings.
 
ChicagoBlue said:
Watch him constantly looking over his shoulder, dropping and sliding inside to cover the longer ball into midfield, while giving up the ball to the defender.

Once the pass has been made, he often comes forward to close him down, but it’s certainly not a traditional press.
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I think his intensity & timing of the press needs to improve but we’ll see.
 
ChicagoBlue said:
He’s new & young, and learning his craft under Pep. I think he’s done very well so far and is improving all the time, not the least of which is playing the press and understanding where he needs to be and when!
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Absolutely. The the new players normally take a year to settle & we are relying on players not quite tuned in with over played, injured, unfit, out of position team mates.
 
Asa's left peg said:
I'm still a tad worried about Josko. He made mistakes again in the game that were nothing to do with his position or who was in front of him. Hopefully he can get his head right soon.
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It really is that, you know. Technically, he's our most accomplished defender, with Johnny (remember Johnny?). But his head isn't right, and like a number of other players on the pitch, he's making uncharacteristic mistakes. They've lost their effortless trust in themselves and their own decisions, and it'll take a while to get it back.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
It really is that, you know. Technically, he's our most accomplished defender, with Johnny (remember Johnny?). But his head isn't right, and like a number of other players on the pitch, he's making uncharacteristic mistakes. They've lost their effortless trust in themselves and their own decisions, and it'll take a while to get it back.
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He's certainly not the only one. I think Ruben's return will help the defence immeasurably. Phil looks like he is playing with new team mates and Erl looks lost most of the game. Poor Bernie is fighting fires all over the place, but nothing is going to fix that Rodri shaped whole in the middle of the pitch, quickly.
 
CTID1090 said:
The biggest issue does seem to be off the ball and because of the possession based style of play they have to press from the front relentlessly. They seem to be confused on when to press and where to press. And the midfield is not squeezing their midfield enough so even when we force a tight pass out of the back their midfielders consistently had time to receive and turn, which is where the problems start.
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The area where all the other problems are stemming from is the fact we don’t have a single DM in the squad to cover the role Rodders does.

Yesterday it was Kovacic but it was crystal clear he isn’t anywhere near defensively aware enough. I counted about 15 times in the game where he was either out of position or not switched on to the opposition player/movement into space he should’ve been covering.

When Rodders is there that only happens once or twice per game as he is incredible at the role.

It leaves us woefully exposed. I think that then impacts us going forward as we’re too scared to take risks (hence the side to side nonsense) due to the fact we’ll get countered very easily.

Get a good DM in and the improvement will be enormous.

It is absolutely mindblowing that the club has allowed there to be no player in the squad that can cover that role.
 
Asa's left peg said:
I'm still a tad worried about Josko. He made mistakes again in the game that were nothing to do with his position or who was in front of him. Hopefully he can get his head right soon.
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He looked completely demoralised when he made that mistake with the header that let in Vardy. And you could tell by the reaction of his team mates trying to encourage him to forget it that they all know his confidence is in the gutter
 
halfcenturyup said:
I thought so too, the number of times you looked at the defence and it was a flat back four, rather than three and Lewis out of position. Two banks of four even. Maybe I haven't noticed before but it looked like we were much more stable and, a few chances aside, it worked well on reducing my blood pressure. Let somebody else fuck around outside the penalty box without any chance of scoring for a change. Win win.
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Very, very few are the we games where we have less possession than the opponent. Yesterday was one of those. 55%/45%
 
On the bright side - we won. Our offense was a bit better than of late.

On the dark side - we were lucky. There was very little between the sides. For example:
1) Vardy was likely fouled by Ortega, but luckily was a bit offside. Change things a bit and Vardy is onside and a penalty is conceded, and possibly Ortega is red-carded.
2) Leicester hit the word-work twice. Near goals.
3) Vardy fluffed a golden opportunity over the bar.
4) One or two sublime crosses went past our goal with no takers in dark blue.

Our defense remains very poor.

In particular Gvardiol made several errors which could have led to goals (one was a header back to Ortega with his back to the oncoming attacker - probably Ortega is at fault there, as he has to "shout" that Gvardiol has an attacker immediately behind him).

Lewis was frankly awful. He keeps on defending as if he's the last man. Backing up, backing up. Even when plenty of defenders are around him and what he needs to do is attack the ball, because otherwise, the attacker will have all day long to pick out the perfect pass. This happened several times.

Savinho, although good on offense today, was off again on defense. On occasions, Gvardiol has to track their right winger into our penalty box. But for some reason, Savinho isn't tracking their right back. Gvardiol is in our penalty area - and can't cover their right back - this is Savinho's responsibility. On occasion their right back is wide open, Gvariol has tracked into our penalty area and Savinho is nowhere to be seen (literally completely out of camera view). Leicester's right back delivered some excellent crosses because of this and we were very lucky that this didn't lead to goals.

Our press was not coordinated/aggressive-enough. Leicester often beat our initial press and enjoyed a lot of the ball in our half.

Bottom line - a lucky win. We really need to address our defensive problems in the Winter window if we have any hope of a top 4 finish.
 
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