PL Gameweek 36 Fixtures - 13-18th May, 2023

[RandoEFC+]

30 minutes ago, Lucas said:

I had that nagging feeling about Leicester the moment they lost at Fulham. I don't trust Liverpool even if they have won 6 on the trot, I don't think they've looked formidable doing it. Leicester are going to have their moment in this at some point and have beaten Liverpool a few times there.

It's dangerous when teams get easily dismissed, you're just asking for the shock.

If Liverpool do hand Leicester points, that would be absolute textbook for us given how charitable Brighton have been to Forest and Everton.

Still awaiting a team to completely roll over and hand us a win because in fairness, its the only way we'll get one.

Both of your last two are winnable to be honest. West Ham are distracted and Spurs have been a mess for half a season. Every chance you can nick enough points if enough of the others don't deliver. 

[OrangeKhrush]

big game for Leicester, bit of a show some courage game with survival on the line

[Rick]

Really do have a terrible feeling we are going to squash any talk of Champions League qualification by dropping points tonight. We’ve won 6 in a town, but we haven’t looked unbeatable doing it. Leicester are definitely going to get some serious chances tonight. 

[Danny]

Really interesting to see how we’re likely to play without Ivan Toney next season. Expect to see a lot of diagonal balls from Ben Mee or Mathias Jensen out to the wingers Mbeumo and Schade. We know exactly what Mbeumo offers us as a winger and I think this system might allow him to score more goals too.

Schade on the other hand I assumed he’d likely replace Toney but I can’t see that being the case now. His height and strength allows him to take the ball well from the diagonals played to him, his pace and acceleration just gets him away from everyone but what I’m most pleased with is his delivery. He put in 2, maybe 3 crosses against West Ham that created clear cut chances and they were just very sweetly hit. He’s going to be a real threat next season.

I think our style of play is going to do a lot of good for our midfield as well. Currently even though we go long a lot we do play intricate passing plays as well, but our issue is with a 3 man defence and a 3 man midfield with Toney dropping deep a lot the centre of our pitch becomes very congested.

With how we played against West Ham, Mbeumo and Schade stretched the game so far that it allowed for Damsgaard, Dasilva and Onyeka specifically the opportunity to make more central runs be it with the ball or just late runs into the box. I think the thing that will help them most is the ability to make late runs into the box though, it’s difficult to do in a congested midfield as the opposition congest it with their defence.

I was also pleased with Wissa even if he was wasteful, he could have scored a hattrick and tbh we could have won by about 6 or 7 goals overall. But playing second fiddle to Toney means that Wissa has had to fit either as a winger in Mbeumo’s case or as Toney who will drop deep a lot. But he’s not particularly great that deep in build up play and his natural instincts don’t kick in when creating for people like Mbeumo or Schade seem to, his kick in in front of the 6 yard box. Honestly I think he could score 15-20 next season if we carry on playing like this, the whole set up really suits him and for a small man he scores a lot of headers too, so has a lot of bases covered as a goal scorer.

I think we will need to bring in at least another winger and another striker to have enough squad depth as that will be 6 players for 3 positions once Toney leaves. Keane Lewis-Potter will likely thrive in this formation too, I think people will be surprised at how well we will adapt next season when Toney leaves and how much more fluid we will look but the work for that started when we signed Schade in January. It will definitely be interesting to see if we need to sign players of if someone will step up from the B team that just won the PL Cup.

[Lucas]

2 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

Both of your last two are winnable to be honest. West Ham are distracted and Spurs have been a mess for half a season. Every chance you can nick enough points if enough of the others don't deliver. 

Yeah, I've no idea what shape West Ham will be in. Hoping they go to extra time Thursday night and have a right battle with AZ. Then just hope we don't give away anything easy.

If yourselves, Leicester or Forest had Spurs at home on the last day, granted I'd not be feeling great about that 

Going into the last games, you want it in your own hands don't you, that's for sure.

[Stan]

2 minutes ago, Lucas said:

If yourselves, Leicester or Forest had Spurs at home on the last day, granted I'd not be feeling great about that 

Going into the last games, you want it in your own hands don't you, that's for sure.

Are you sure  

Look at the Spurs goal times, and our epic bottling nature coming to the fore...

 

 

Funnily enough, that 2nd one was actually on the last day of the season which meant we missed out on Champions League  

[Lucas]

1 hour ago, Danny said:

Really interesting to see how we’re likely to play without Ivan Toney next season. Expect to see a lot of diagonal balls from Ben Mee or Mathias Jensen out to the wingers Mbeumo and Schade. We know exactly what Mbeumo offers us as a winger and I think this system might allow him to score more goals too.

Schade on the other hand I assumed he’d likely replace Toney but I can’t see that being the case now. His height and strength allows him to take the ball well from the diagonals played to him, his pace and acceleration just gets him away from everyone but what I’m most pleased with is his delivery. He put in 2, maybe 3 crosses against West Ham that created clear cut chances and they were just very sweetly hit. He’s going to be a real threat next season.

I think our style of play is going to do a lot of good for our midfield as well. Currently even though we go long a lot we do play intricate passing plays as well, but our issue is with a 3 man defence and a 3 man midfield with Toney dropping deep a lot the centre of our pitch becomes very congested.

With how we played against West Ham, Mbeumo and Schade stretched the game so far that it allowed for Damsgaard, Dasilva and Onyeka specifically the opportunity to make more central runs be it with the ball or just late runs into the box. I think the thing that will help them most is the ability to make late runs into the box though, it’s difficult to do in a congested midfield as the opposition congest it with their defence.

I was also pleased with Wissa even if he was wasteful, he could have scored a hattrick and tbh we could have won by about 6 or 7 goals overall. But playing second fiddle to Toney means that Wissa has had to fit either as a winger in Mbeumo’s case or as Toney who will drop deep a lot. But he’s not particularly great that deep in build up play and his natural instincts don’t kick in when creating for people like Mbeumo or Schade seem to, his kick in in front of the 6 yard box. Honestly I think he could score 15-20 next season if we carry on playing like this, the whole set up really suits him and for a small man he scores a lot of headers too, so has a lot of bases covered as a goal scorer.

I think we will need to bring in at least another winger and another striker to have enough squad depth as that will be 6 players for 3 positions once Toney leaves. Keane Lewis-Potter will likely thrive in this formation too, I think people will be surprised at how well we will adapt next season when Toney leaves and how much more fluid we will look but the work for that started when we signed Schade in January. It will definitely be interesting to see if we need to sign players of if someone will step up from the B team that just won the PL Cup.

I think that Victor Gyokores would be a perfect fit for you if Toney is out for ages, I really do.

He has great hold up play, drifts wide but also loves that penalty box. 

If Coventry don't go up, I'd certainly look at him if I were you. I wouldn't be against him for us either should we miraculously stay up.

[Lucas]

Just now, Stan said:

Are you sure  

Look at the Spurs goal times, and our epic bottling nature coming to the fore...

 

 

Funnily enough, that 2nd one was actually on the last day of the season which meant we missed out on Champions League  

You know what, whatever shape Spurs are in, I'll be worried simply because of what they can do. 

They might well have one good away performance in ten and yet I'd always feel like we'd catch that one game in that ten 

But I do get the concern from others given what they have served up recently.

[Lucas]

P.S Have to say, it's so hard with the relegation stuff.

I never actively want any ill will on Leicester or Everton (Ok, maybe Forest) but when it's dog eat dog, you can only think about yourself and pray for their defeats to keep you alive.

Will be no hard feelings if either of you survive over us, we'll only have ourselves to blame tbh.

[Dan+]

Football is funny isn't it, this is why it hooks everybody back in time and time again. We can be as hopeless as you can possibly imagine and yet when the game actually comes there's always that 'what if'. Football is great because of its randomness. You can predict things to a degree but the twists and turns are basically guaranteed.

The shock factor of quite how bad we were at Fulham may have jolted the management into thinking we need a rethink in how we're approaching these games. We are creating chances again (though only once the game was gone at Fulham, naturally) but we're even more open than we were under even Rodgers. We've gone 1-0 down in every game under Smith in the first 20 minutes, and 17 of the last 18 league games which is truly appalling. But then we've scored in every game too.

We won this fixture last season with a very make shift XI. We did get lucky that Salah botched a penalty, but I did think we put in the sort of performance we'd need to put in on a night like tonight. We frustrated them, actually made life quite hard for them, totally untypical of this Leicester side of the last couple of years.

What he needs to do is make us more compact, harder to play through the lines. The space teams have to attack us is truly staggering stuff, encourage anybody to actually watch the highlights of the Fulham game if they're interested -  you would think you were watching a team in the Dutch second tier. You would be gutted if you were a Fulham attacking player who didn't get on the pitch that day.

If that means a back five or a diamond, so be it, because what we're doing isn't working.

15th May. Usually a significant date for us. An FA Cup win in 2021, a guard of honour at Stamford Bridge in 2016, confirmed survival at Sunderland in 2015. 

I have no faith what so ever in this team of utter bottlers. In my mind we're still down. But it feels everybody has finally admitted it and they did similar after we drew with Hull in 2015. It was from then we seemed to pick up. Not that I think you can really compare the two teams, but football does do its best to make me look stupid.

[Stan]

No Soyuncu for us, big shame as he's probably been our best CB since Smith was brought in.

Evans has been out for however many months, not match-fit, and no idea how he'll cope. Castagne & Ricardo as the full-backs is different, but good to have experience there.

 

 

 

Hope Ndidi has a good game. Needs to protect the defence and not do anything over-complicated. 

[6666]

A disappointing way for the title race to completely die but it has looked like Man City pretty much had it already wrapped up since they beat us at the Etihad. Will be nice to see us involved in Champions League football again so looking forward to that.

[Dave]

Saturday felt like Roy Hodgson's Palace in his first season. After holding out for the first 15 minutes we really coasted to victory. If it wasnt for Wilfried Zaha's injury I reckon it would have been a rout. We just looked really comfortable.

We're in an odd position now where to strengthen our starting XI we would need to spend 40mil+ on players to keep up with the strength of the core of the team. Anderson, Guehi, Doucoure, Eze, Zaha, Olise. They're all top players that wouldn't look out of place in some top six squads. Sadly with the owners we have I can't see it happening.

It's quite odd to think that in January it felt obvious we missed a central midfielder who could play more advanced, and that player we needed was already in our squad in Ebere Eze. Getting him signed on a longer contract feels like a club priority now. It's getting to a stage where I think it would be a mistake to renew Wilf's contract and not Eze's given the age difference. When he smiles, we smile, and we're a much better team with him.

[Lucas]

9 minutes ago, The Palace Fan said:

Saturday felt like Roy Hodgson's Palace in his first season. After holding out for the first 15 minutes we really coasted to victory. If it wasnt for Wilfried Zaha's injury I reckon it would have been a rout. We just looked really comfortable.

We're in an odd position now where to strengthen our starting XI we would need to spend 40mil+ on players to keep up with the strength of the core of the team. Anderson, Guehi, Doucoure, Eze, Zaha, Olise. They're all top players that wouldn't look out of place in some top six squads. Sadly with the owners we have I can't see it happening.

It's quite odd to think that in January it felt obvious we missed a central midfielder who could play more advanced, and that player we needed was already in our squad in Ebere Eze. Getting him signed on a longer contract feels like a club priority now. It's getting to a stage where I think it would be a mistake to renew Wilf's contract and not Eze's given the age difference. When he smiles, we smile, and we're a much better team with him.

I'll always regret us not signing Eze.

He wanted to stay in London, it never got going and he was always the best player we faced in the Championship.

Always has a blinder against us. But for injuries, he'd be knocking on the England set up for sure.

[Stan]

Why were you Liverpool fans worried

 

 

[Bluebird Hewitt]

Leicester currently 2-0 down, the first is literally League Two football really.

Would be interesting to see both offside shouts again as both looked very tight.

[LFCMadLad]

Could do with knocking in 5 or 6 here gorgeous goal difference. 

Curtis could potentially save us millions

[Devil]

Leicester are gone for me.

Absolutely shocking.

[Stan]

19 minutes ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

Leicester currently 2-0 down, the first is literally League Two football really.

Would be interesting to see both offside shouts again as both looked very tight.

Neither were. They looked tight in real time but both clearly onside. 

 

[Stan]

12 minutes ago, Devil said:

Leicester are gone for me.

Absolutely shocking.

We're just pathetic. 

Around Feb/March time plenty said we're too good to go down. Too many good players etc etc. 

Sorry but myself, and @Dan probably for longer, have said for ages that this team just show nothing at all about them. There's no organisation, no togetherness, cohesion, chemistry. They all look so unfit. They are mentally shot. They lack confidence and desire. We're so soft, physically and mentally. The relegation has been on the cards for a while. For a side that HAS to win, we show the totally opposite, it's like they're on the beach already acting like they're already safe. It's pathetic.

I'd rather just Everton and Leeds win their games and just get us relegated. Done with the hope that is carried into each game only for those mercenaries and wasters on the pitch to disappoint time and time again. 

The whole club needs a refresh. So many of these players need binning and booting out. 

[Fairy In Boots]

5 minutes ago, Stan said:

We're just pathetic. 

Around Feb/March time plenty said we're too good to go down. Too many good players etc etc. 

Sorry but myself, and @Dan probably for longer, have said for ages that this team just show nothing at all about them. There's no organisation, no togetherness, cohesion, chemistry. They all look so unfit. They are mentally shot. They lack confidence and desire. We're so soft, physically and mentally. The relegation has been on the cards for a while. For a side that HAS to win, we show the totally opposite, it's like they're on the beach already acting like they're already safe. It's pathetic.

I'd rather just Everton and Leeds win their games and just get us relegated. Done with the hope that is carried into each game only for those mercenaries and wasters on the pitch to disappoint time and time again. 

The whole club needs a refresh. So many of these players need binning and booting out. 

Would you keep Smith? 

[Whiskey]

Stunned how after conceding two quick goals, Leicester kicked off and lost the ball again inside about 12 seconds - should have been 3-0 tbh. 

Until it's mathematically certain I won't rest easy, but Leicester are surely gone. I can't for the life of my fathom how you win the league and seven years later you're going down.

[Stan]

8 minutes ago, Fairy In Boots said:

Would you keep Smith? 

Probably not.

He's probably been brought in purely because there was no-one else willing to be an interim. 

Having said that, if the only alternative is Russell Martin, then yes I would keep him  

[Dr. Gonzo]

Leicester just look like they've accepted they're going to go down.

[Stan]

1 minute ago, Whiskey said:

Stunned how after conceding two quick goals, Leicester kicked off and lost the ball again inside about 12 seconds - should have been 3-0 tbh. 

Until it's mathematically certain I won't rest easy, but Leicester are surely gone. I can't for the life of my fathom how you win the league and seven years later you're going down.

Insanely bad mismanagement of the club since Vichai died. Top isn't fit to run the club based on several decisions in the last few years. Our Director of Football, Jon Rudkin, needs binning. There basically needs to be a hell of a lot of change from the top right down to the players. Wouldn't even mind if we got new owners to be honest, it really has got that bad. I know there's a good PR about them purely because of the great stuff they do in the community and all the fundraising they do for NHS and local charities/hospitals and all the free stuff they give fans, but sadly that doesn't cut it as a football owner. Top should have been more ruthless and binned off Rodgers much earlier. But that's just the tip of the iceberg really.