PL Round 12 Fixtures - 18-20th October, 2022

[OrangeKhrush]

7 minutes ago, Dan said:

West Ham the only one I'm confident are fine. They've been quite unlucky a few times this season I think. They'll be OK.

Fulham making a far better fist of it than usual but still not totally sold on them. There's this tendency and it's hard to avoid but every year teams get written off way too early, but on the flip side they get deemed safe too early as well. Fulham allow more chances against them than anyone else in the league by a mile (even us!). They are a good team going forward and that may do it but I'm not quite deeming them out of this yet. I still think we should be finishing above them.

I think that's fair.   west ham shouldn't be in the discussion but they are losing games when they play well which is alarming.  I think moyes is the problem with his hoof it up football circa 2005.

Fulham are Leeds great in attack weak defensively, we had our first good chance against them a minute in and before the red card we already had 2 chances.

[Stan]

54 minutes ago, OrangeKhrush said:

the problem with Leeds is that they can't defend for love or money.   they play pretty football but the base starts at the back and Leeds didn't invest enough there

It wasn't that pretty yesterday. Sinisterra and Summerville were the outlets, Bamford was useless and Rodrigo didn't get much service either.

The defensive issues need sorting - their insistence to play from the back, even yesterday, was criminal. The amount of times they tried to play around us but ended up playing to one of our players was surprising after the 5th or 6th time it went wrong. 

[OrangeKhrush]

12 minutes ago, Stan said:

It wasn't that pretty yesterday. Sinisterra and Summerville were the outlets, Bamford was useless and Rodrigo didn't get much service either.

The defensive issues need sorting - their insistence to play from the back, even yesterday, was criminal. The amount of times they tried to play around us but ended up playing to one of our players was surprising after the 5th or 6th time it went wrong. 

therein lies the issue teams that press well will cause them issues because they don't have the quality to play out.   they need to go long and look for secondary ball.   

of the teams at the bottom Everton and Wolves have the strongest defence and just need goals, teams like Leeds scare me, they are a game away from someone putting 4 or 5 past them.

[Lucas]

21 hours ago, Dan said:

I think Leeds post Bielsa was a bit of a poisoned chalice. I don't know if you agree but I really don't think it's a good side at all, one of the worst three in the league I'd say along with Forest and Bournemouth, a squad that ultimately Bielsa's methods got more out of the sum of their parts. Following him was always going to be tough. You had to be special to be popular after him and I'm not sure Marsch is - definitely not got the fans on side based on the videos I was watching tonight. I couldn't really fault your effort but there was just zero quality. It felt like a roided up Championship side.

Don't get me wrong I agree with your assessment on us. We weren't good. We're firmly in the mix. We had to win that. Wolves A, Man City H, Everton A, West Ham A, four fixtures we won't be favourites for with the bookies (though I deem Wolves very beatable) before the World Cup. If we didn't win tonight we were in huge bother.

It's a weird one. I've seen us in some games when we've looked decent and thought "We'll be fine". We got enough about us to stay up.

Problem with that is, those performances haven't turned into points and I now think the confidence is sapping away from us.

It doesn't help that Marsch's tactics are god awful, he sets us up to fail far too often and that starting line up last night was a joke. Cooper and Harrison should have started, Gelhardt's hardly getting any minutes and he's the most frightening forward we have at this club.

Everyone knows Leicester are based on counter attack. So we push the full backs high and shock horror, twice Firpo is out of position for both goals. We are that transparent under Marsch, Rodgers knew it would happen and got you to target that area. You just had to be patient.

I wouldn't go as far to judge us on just on yesterday's showing, but that is up there as the worst we have shelled out this year, even when Brentford beat us 5-2 we were better than that yesterday.

The other thing I'd probably say is for the neutral, watching us right now, you probably wouldn't pick too many players from us to replace what you have.

I'm very worried. I think everything that could possibly go wrong does for us at the moment and sometimes its very hard to turn that momentum around without getting that bit of luck or something to change your fortunes. If we lose at home to Fulham, Marsch has to go ASAP for me.

As for you, what annoyed me most is how easy we made it for you knowing how much of a turbulant time you've had. We just let you off the hook completely. I've not thought at any moment like Leicester would go down this season and I still don't, but equally I'm not impressed with what I've seen but equally I'm aware if you add Maddison, Ndidi, Evans, Perreira into that 11, things look much better.

[Dan+]

1 hour ago, Lucas said:

It's a weird one. I've seen us in some games when we've looked decent and thought "We'll be fine". We got enough about us to stay up.

Problem with that is, those performances haven't turned into points and I now think the confidence is sapping away from us.

It doesn't help that Marsch's tactics are god awful, he sets us up to fail far too often and that starting line up last night was a joke. Cooper and Harrison should have started, Gelhardt's hardly getting any minutes and he's the most frightening forward we have at this club.

Everyone knows Leicester are based on counter attack. So we push the full backs high and shock horror, twice Firpo is out of position for both goals. We are that transparent under Marsch, Rodgers knew it would happen and got you to target that area. You just had to be patient.

I wouldn't go as far to judge us on just on yesterday's showing, but that is up there as the worst we have shelled out this year, even when Brentford beat us 5-2 we were better than that yesterday.

The other thing I'd probably say is for the neutral, watching us right now, you probably wouldn't pick too many players from us to replace what you have.

I'm very worried. I think everything that could possibly go wrong does for us at the moment and sometimes its very hard to turn that momentum around without getting that bit of luck or something to change your fortunes. If we lose at home to Fulham, Marsch has to go ASAP for me.

As for you, what annoyed me most is how easy we made it for you knowing how much of a turbulant time you've had. We just let you off the hook completely. I've not thought at any moment like Leicester would go down this season and I still don't, but equally I'm not impressed with what I've seen but equally I'm aware if you add Maddison, Ndidi, Evans, Perreira into that 11, things look much better.

You're good in patches and you've got this ability to always look quite dangerous but it's in a way that would eventually really infuriate me. I can't accuse you of negativity but maybe more naivety. It's all a bit chaotic. Once upon a time you used that to your advantage but it seems less to be the case now.

Probably unfair to write you off on one game against us but the form is pretty dire, 2 points from 7 games is shocking regardless.

I'm not completely buying into us sorting our defensive issues but it is quite encouraging that we've somehow managed to now keep 3 clean sheets in 4 games, which was unthinkable a month ago. Faes has been a really good buy so far. But then I do think teams are blowing their chances. You and Forest should both have probably scored one of your chances.

We're definitely a bogey side for you. Feel like we hardly ever lose to Leeds.

[Lucas]

11 hours ago, Dan said:

You're good in patches and you've got this ability to always look quite dangerous but it's in a way that would eventually really infuriate me. I can't accuse you of negativity but maybe more naivety. It's all a bit chaotic. Once upon a time you used that to your advantage but it seems less to be the case now.

Probably unfair to write you off on one game against us but the form is pretty dire, 2 points from 7 games is shocking regardless.

I'm not completely buying into us sorting our defensive issues but it is quite encouraging that we've somehow managed to now keep 3 clean sheets in 4 games, which was unthinkable a month ago. Faes has been a really good buy so far. But then I do think teams are blowing their chances. You and Forest should both have probably scored one of your chances.

We're definitely a bogey side for you. Feel like we hardly ever lose to Leeds.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you. I don't feel there is any calmness to our play and we make bad decisions on the ball. We create great openings and then ruin it with something that looks brainless. We definitely couod do with more composure.

I've so many bad memories playing your lot. That 3-1 win during covid at yours seemed like a complete anolomy which is probably why we enjoyed that one a lot.

Its been good for you that you have had a decent run of fixtures and I think thats why the board never panicked in sacking Rodgers, they knew you had winnable games coming up. 7pts from 12 in the last 4 is solid. It could and should be more in normal circumstances but in terms of grafting out points whilst confidence is so low, its not bad.