Try going to a Spurs home game.

The most fickle bunch of “fans” in the country

Try the west stand its much more peaceful i think most of um are asleep by 10 minutes....

Sounds to me like you didn't enjoy the experience, but surely you aren't expecting fans to only make a sound or shout when they are saying things you agree/approve of.

comment by a foxes voice (U1133)
posted 5 minutes ago
Sounds to me like you didn't enjoy the experience, but surely you aren't expecting fans to only make a sound or shout when they are saying things you agree/approve of.
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No, I understand that fans have a right to voice their frustrations (freedom of speech, blah blah) but yesterday was excessively negative. Anyone would think we'd never put in a slightly shoddy half an hour period before.

I do expect a degree of context - if you weren't aware of our league position beforehand, you would assume we were in the bottom 3 judging by the fans reaction, not top of the league. When we're top of the league and the fans are still venting about how furious they are, it just comes across as idiocy and entitlement from a small minority who really wish they weren't there.

Well maybe I’ll just have to stay for another 6 months now Foxello is back…. what a shame

It all comes down to the following

1. You can’t compare this to the league 1 reset under a new manager with the club having never experienced any kind of real success recently. Expectations were low

2. The fans are frustrated at where the club finds itself. The fact we’re walking this league without playing well tells you we shouldn’t be here. Expectations are PL level and there is no patience left

3 The fans are frustrated with the running of the club and in general and it’s coming out in different ways. The lack of engagement from the top doesn’t help.

4. Some fans prefer a transition based pressing style of football. Some prefer long ball, you’ve always been in love with the patient possession build up. As a result you fell in love with Maresca immediately - you haven’t to accept others don’t enjoy this style (I don’t mind it but it needs a plan b)

5. I don’t want to burn anything down but I’m struggling to accept going back to a yo-yo club and I believe that’s where we are. Nothing to do with Maresca but when you believe that we will be relegated after we get promoted because the core issues still remain then it’s hard to be positive - even now

So yeah - I wasn’t planning on posting again but I haven’t seen you on here since I gave you a mouthful when you had a pop at me before - hope you’re doing well and whatever happens best of luck for the season

On point 1. - OK, I can accept that expectations were much lower back then, but we still didn't expect to be in the league and we were desperate to get out of it. Perhaps 02/03 would be a better example when we went from a period of success to a sudden but equally painful relegation and bounced back straight away. Again, we didn't dominate every single game and had plenty of odd-goal wins. I don't remember this level of disgruntlement because of it.

On points 2 and 3 - I don't really get any sense that there is any great disgruntlement with Top or King Power. Sure, last season was the first time that there has been genuine disapproval of the way the club was run, but I don't get the notion that there's this great feeling of discontent with the ownership under the surface waiting to burst out, certainly not at the ground. Also, to be fair to him, Top has backed Maresca with around £35m for his preferred signings (yes, that was generated through sales, but it's a massive investment in the Championship) and not shown any signs of pulling the plug despite KP's financial issues. It's hard to see what more they could have done since relegation to put things right.

4) I don't 'love' the style - I think there's lots that can be improved. We should be moving the ball quicker and making more from our runs. We still have square pegs in round holes. Maresca needs to improve his in-game management. I think I am more willing to accept that we are at the beginning of a process, though, and that it will take time for us to be fluent with it. This is an ideal season to do it. Plus, we need to remember that clubs come here, pack their final third and try to hit us on the break. We won't steamroller these teams - they don't put the 3 points in a nice little gift box with a pretty ribbon on it. We have to work and be patient. Unfortunately, many of our fans don't have patience.

5) I appreciate your concerns but you are trying to predict the future. We won't know for 18 months whether you are right, so do you just want to hide in a darkened room until then to see if you are correct? Last season, all 3 promoted team stayed up. This season, they are an exceptionally week trio and will probably go down. We won't know where we stand until we get there and see what signings we make and how Maresca can evolve the style of play. But there's no reason why we cannot stabilise ourselves in the Premier League again. The days of top 5/8 European pushes are probably over, for now at least, but we can definitely get back to being a solid outfit again.

I know you have already nailed your colours to the mast with regards the ownership, manager, style of play, etc. You might be right, you might be wrong - time will tell. But if you, and others of a similar viewpoint, cannot enjoy this season, the question is: if not now, when? Because the answer seems like never, which is a shame.

To answer your question - I’ll enjoy things again when I can see that we have a bright future ahead of us. It’s not just about where we are now - it’s where we are going, who is leading us, what we are building as a club and where our ambitions lie. Those things are far more important to me than 3 points on a Saturday or wanting Maresca to change his style etc

Those things are what made the first couple of years in the championship under Pearsons 2nd stint ok for me. Yea we lost to Watford in the play offs etc but we were building something. It wasn’t about Pearson - it was about the King Power and the foundations for success. It was obvious it was only a matter of time

This time feels very much the opposite. Like those days are well behind us. We aren’t building anything. I don’t even feel we’ve fully reset after last season. We’re just demonstrating we shouldn’t be here and we’ve hired a promising manager who is working well with the immense quality he has at his disposal

If the issues at board level that led to our overnight and unacceptable demise haven’t been addressed then why do fans think the long term future is going to pan out better than the failures we’ve endured over the last 2 years? Are Top and Rudkin suddenly going to turn Leicester into Brighton? Seems unlikely

And another reason I can’t get too excited is Burnley. Burnley are the absolute carbon copy of Leicester. The style of football they played last season, the way they got promoted and notably - the stubborn refusal to change their philosophy which is failing so spectacularly in the premier league.

You simply cannot play Marescas tactics at our level next season. The Leeds and Middlesborough games demonstrate perfectly what will happen. The PL is the league of the high press. It’s where Marescas philosophy falls apart completely - he’s got no answer to it and neither has Kompany.

The owners should have understood that before making this appointment. Either they have a very cunning plan which involves signing some of the most promising players in world football or they are deluded enough to think we can honestly play like Man City and get back into Europe

When you appoint a manager and undrertake a rebuild - you do it with more than this season in mind. You build a philosophy and a template for how you want to play (which informs the players you sign) which leads to being able to compete in the division above. I see no evidence of Leicester having done that

When I’m making a call about next season - I’m not doing it on a 50/50 whim. I’m looking at the evidence - the pattern set by other clubs. What happens next is nott inevitable but equally is quite predictable

I'm not going to get into another long-winded argument about a hypothetical situation that we won't know the answer to for another 18 months. But on the comparisons to Burnley, I don't think you can look at their squad either last season or this and say that they are better than us. A big part of their success last season was the goals and assists from Tella, Benson and Zarouary - the first was on loan and has now left, and the other two have dropped off the face of the planet, for whatever reason. The players they have signed (with the possible exception of Koleosho) are not as good as what they had last season and their younger signings are out of their depth.

I also don't think Kompany showed anything at Anderlecht to suggest he would be a PL standard manager and lacks the coaching pedigree that Maresca had as assistant and under-21 manager at Man City. Maresca is clearly a very talented coach and I would say that he has improved almost every single player from last season with only a handful of exceptions, whilst successfully integrating the likes of Hermansen, Mavididi, Winks and Fatawu. Whether his tactics or style will be successful in the Premier League remains to be seen but I would rather have a manager with a clear philosophy and who implements an identity on his team than one who doesn't or can't. It just seems pointless to me to let our success (or likely success) be downplayed because of fears about next season.

Also just seen from the media yesterday that Maresca had to justify himself on Radio Leicester due to the impatience and negative reaction from the crowd. Whether you like the style or not, the fact that a new manager who has got us top of the league with 42 points in November is having to even answer questions about it is just ludicrous.

The big question might not be whether he is or isn't a PL standard manager - it might end up being why he would stay here when vocal minorities in the fan base seem so intent on dismissing him and his ideas. I'm sure there will be some clubs who would quite like to have a manager with that philosophy and those ideas in charge of the club. Why risk your status as a rising star of coaching at a club where people don't appear to appreciate your efforts? Leicester need Maresca more than he needs us.

If he does decide to leave, I hope these fans will be happy with Frank Lampard or Scott Parker. It might make them happy but it will be to the long-term detriment of the club.

So the way Leeds and Middlesborough comfortably nullified our tactics doesn’t concern you for the future? And there’s nothing about how Burnley play (and the similarities to Marescas style) - and how it’s being demonstrated not to work in the PL because of the high press that concerns you in any way?

Can I ask you an honest question - have you read the article I tagged the other day that highlights the reason we lost against Leeds and Boro and why it wasn’t a coincidence? It seems so painstakingly obvious why this style of play will come apart in the PL (exactly as it is for Burnley) that I’m confused as to why others can’t see it?

Also you can’t on the one hand dish out loads of praise for the way Maresca has us knocking the championship around and then try and dismiss Kompanys achievements of last season when Burnley pretty much did the same.

And no one is going to be happy with Lampard or Parker. I wouldn’t worry your heartthrob isn’t going anywhere. He needs to build his career

Leeds are the only team in this league comparable to us in terms of quality. We lost to the better team on the night. They drew with Rotherham two days ago and lost to Stoke only a few weeks ago. Against Boro, like Hull, we were the better team and had enough chances but didn't take them. That's football sometimes. We absolutely battered Southampton and Preston when everyone said that we'd struggle against them. I don't really think you can extrapolate anything other than that yes, some teams have worked out how to play against us, but this season we will still beat 90% of them by wearing them down.

Every promoted team had to strengthen when they come up, I don't think any team has gone up and stayed up without doing so. Both Burnley and Sheff Utd have weaker teams now than last season, which is why both look out of their depth. Again, I think we have better players than Burnley and I think we would be successful with this style of play than they have been. But time will tell and we'll certainly have to strengthen to stay up.

Not knocking Kompany's achievements, just pointing out that Maresca has a better pedigree due to his coaching record.

" I wouldn’t worry your heartthrob isn’t going anywhere."

Comments like this is why it's pretty much impossible to have a meaningful discussion with you these days.

Gonna ask the question again - have you read the article I tagged on here this week? Losing to Leeds and Boro was no coincidence. If you haven’t done, have a read and honestly tell me what you think of it

Styles make fights as they say in Boxing and they also make football matches. Play a certain way against certain styles and 8 times out of 10 you’ll come unstuck. Cue Burnley. Unless you’re signing top 6 PL quality - you’re going to get pressed into making mistakes all over the park. Exactly as we were against Leeds and Boro. And by QPR incidentally who should have got a result against us

comment by Foxello - "a miserable Rodgers obsessed weirdo" (U6985)
posted 3 minutes ago
" I wouldn’t worry your heartthrob isn’t going anywhere."

Comments like this is why it's pretty much impossible to have a meaningful discussion with you these days.
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It’s a little tongue in cheek to be fair and I think we’ve had a meaningful discussion don’t you?

https://totalfootballanalysis.com/team-analysis/efl-championship-202324-leicester-city-tactical-analysis-tactics

Please have a read and tell me what you think. Very similar article on Burnley’s similar problems in the PL - being forced into giving the ball away

I haven't read it yet - I'll do the courtesy of reading it when I have some time. I'd like to read it properly rather than skimming through.

On the bigger question about Burnley, though - are they struggling purely because of being a possession-based team, or because they lack the necessary quality to be successful at it? I am inclined to think the latter. As I said earlier, they've lost all their attacking players from last season, the players they have signed are not up to it and they still have the nucleus of the aging players who took them down. No team that regularly plays Jay Rodriguez and Johann Gudmundsson in 2023 is going to survive in the Premier League, whether they play possession based or long ball.

In theory, possession-based football is the ideal counterplay to beat gegenpressing teams - by playing around teams and exploiting the space they leave to create chances. Think of how many times Man City have beaten Liverpool with their contrasting styles, for examples. It's why it struggles against defensive teams like Watford who just sit back, and why it requires patience and perseverance. Obviously in the PL you need the right calibre of players to pull it off, and why we will need to bring in players who are of a high standard in it. There's a reason why more and more clubs are switching to possession-based football - because all the stats show that the more you have the ball, the better your chances of winning.

Really good debate going down here. I like it.

I’m going to place myself firmly on the fence.

I’m happy with Maresca and how he’s changed the mentality of the players and squad and got us fighting for results again. It’s good to see.

I do understand some frustrations in the crowd though and with 99. Possession based systems are fine if you have enough movement and quality to unlock defences when you get to the final 3rd. Sometimes we look too ponderous and I’m still not convinced we have the quality in our wide strikers to get through the deep narrow block.

When we’ve looked our best it’s when we’ve been ahead and teams have had to come on to us. When they do we’re good at playing through the press and being effective on the counter.

But I do believe we need to give Maresca time to get more from the tactics. And I’m not writing them off until we get up and have a transfer window to strengthen. I share 99’s concerns that playing like this in the prem without the required quality is a risk and could backfire, but I’m happy to wait and see.

The crowd have always been moaners at the footy. You get that everywhere. Fans just want to see us create chances and too often we’re passive and don’t look like scoring. So I get it.

But we’re winning and so far it’s working, so I’m happy to give this project time and see where we go. I’m not one to moan at games, so you won’t find me in the list you read out Foxello. That said, I do understand the frustrations sometimes. I hope we can push on and look a bit more dangerous in possession and then everyone will be happy.

Big as you say, we’re top of the league and after last season, you won’t hear me complaining about winning football however we do it!

Actually most teams in the PL have generally employed a gengenpress- particularly teams outside the top 4. The high press yields results and it’s against the possession based teams where it’s most successful. Think of the goals we scored against Man City employing that very style (seem to remember us taking them apart the season after we won the title)

It gets results because you disrupt the ability to control the ball and you force errors. Now id say Man City are a bit of an outlier because they have spent billions and have the best team in the world. Your theory is absolutely right - but it’s not just Burnley that can’t attract the kind of quality to pull that style off in the PL - it’s everyone outside the top 4. That’s precisely why many have opted for the Klopp/Bielsa/Poch approach. It gets results against the very best teams - you limit the space, disrupt the possession and most importantly - as Leeds showed against us - you force mistakes from the back line.

Marescas approach is nothing new. It yields results in the championship as it did for Burnley because of the gap in quality. Whether it can yield the same results at a higher level for a club the size of ours is highly questionable

I’d be fascinated on your thoughts after reading the article.

By the way I’m aware Leicester weren’t exactly gegenpress back in the day - but under Ranieri particularly we did employ a very high pressing game from the front

Ill also add that I think footballing is evolving to incorporate the best of both worlds (and has been for a while) - winning the ball back with a very strong press and suffocating the opposition by controlling possession. The point is (and we can debate what classes as gegenpress all day long) - you need VERY good players to pull that off at the top level

For the rest it’s about defending from the front, winning the ball back quickly and the transition game. I guess that’s where the smaller clubs get success at the highest level. Cue Leicesters title win

Leicester will finish in top 7 teams in Premiership next season.

Interesting thread. I can understand why people get frustrated. We frequently look ponderous. We are at times incredibly slow in the build up. We get forward into promising positions, up to the edge of the opposition penalty box, then start passing backwards, frequently ending up back with Hermandsen; this is usually in the middle of our half rather than in the penalty area of course, he tends to get high enough up the pitch to places which would have given Kasper a nosebleed.

We were quite poor in the first half hour or so. We got better as the game went on.

What was disappointing was there were some passages of play which ended up with audible dissent from the Kop area - that's not good, how is that helping the team? I'm quite depressed by Foxello's description of the extent of what the idiots around him were saying, we don't get anything like that round me in the West stand; occasional groans perhaps but nothing approaching the vitriol expressed in the Kop. What exactly do these people want? I don't particularly like possession based football, but our manager is going to follow a Pep style philosophy, he's doing it very successfully so far, and he seems to be making a decent fist of getting players to play well, including waving a magic wand at Vestergaard.

If you were to transport the Neanderthals back in time to before the start of the season, and say that towards the end of November we will be top of the League by 3 points, clear of third by 10 points, with 14 wins I couldn't see any of them being unhappy with that - needless to say I'm more than content with where we are!

That doesn't stop me also being concerned about our direction of travel, if we are fortunate enough to be promoted I have grave doubts about what next season would look like as Man City lite or similar. If teams in this division had better finishers we'd have a lot less points than we have now, so I do worry when I think of what EPL teams might do to us. I'm also bothered that we still have Rudders in position; making decisions such as giving Hamza a 4 year contract doesn't fill me with any confidence that he's improving.

I do tell myself that we need to concentrate on getting out of this league first and worry about next season when it comes, but I don't like the idea of us potentially struggling in the EPL like Burnley are.

The article is a fascinating read. There's definitely a template there for other teams to use to frustrate us in terms of stopping Hermansen from playing out and man-marking KDH and Iheanacho or Vardy. Most teams in this league won't be able to execute the plan as well as Leeds (I still maintain that despite Boro's tactics, we had enough good chances to win - only Leeds have truly outplayed and out-tacticed us, IMO).

The important thing for me is that I suspect someone as invested in his philosophy and 'the idea' as Maresca clearly is will also know it's downsides and that you need to adapt when other teams nullify you. I would suggest he did take note of this against Watford and changed things accordingly - Justin played noticeably higher up and more like a conventional LB in the second half, giving Mavididi more support, and Ricardo and Hamza both seemed to play a little higher in supporting the high 8's. Maresca clearly has his ideology and won't deviate much from it, but he's learning as a new coach and I don't think he's as stubborn or arrogant as Rodgers was and I'm confident that he will take lessons from these games where we have struggled. I still don't think we are anyway near the finished article with this style of play - some will look at that and say that's a concern, but I still think we have a long way to reaching out ceiling. For me, that's exciting not fearful.

Every promoted team has to strengthen. We will too - we would very likely struggle if we didn't make a single signing. We'll need 5 or 6 PL quality players who are use to this style of play. I wouldn't be surprised to see us going to Man City, Arsenal and Brighton and looking at some of their players to bring in. The simple fact is right now, we don't know where we'll be in 6 months. But if we are talking about how we stay up rather than who we need to sell because we're still in the Championship, Maresca will have been successful with the first stage of the process. Then it's up to him, the club and the players to prove we can survive. Burnley are a warning sign, but we don't yet need to believe that they are a premonition for how things will be for us.

On the crowd - maybe I got unlucky with my choice of game. Maybe it was because we had lost 2 in a row then had to stew over the international break. Maybe it's because the weather was cold and everyone's brains were freezing. Maybe it was the geriatric boomers day out and it's not normally bad in there. But I was about two thirds of the way up in SK3 and it was incessant negativity from about the third or fourth minute throughout. It started when Hermansen kept the ball at his feet for about 20 seconds because there was no pass on and then it was set in stone for most of the game, only abaiting when we scored.

Part of me thinks it's a cultural thing. An older section of the fan base that are clearly use to a certain style of football who cannot see that football has evolved in the past decade or so. Because we had such huge success playing a counter-attacking style that relied on the pressing of Kante and Okazaki and the individual brilliance of Mahrez and Vardy, people think this should be our identity. But by the last couple of months of the 15/16 season, teams had started to find us out and we had the same kind of struggles breaking teams down that we do now (Ranieri, to his credit, realised this and changed accordingly). Once teams worked out how to beat us, we had to adapt or die and we've been trying to evolve ever since, with mixed results. But in their minds, I think fans still see this as the way we should always play, and anything that looks like 'tippy tappy sh&t' is quickly criticised.

What we say on forums like this is largely irrelevant - it doesn't impact on how we perform on the pitch, it's simply a chance to vent. In the ground, though, it's different - constant screaming and shouting does have an impact. When we have a manager who is teaching his players to be patient and keep the ball, but fans who want the total opposite, it's going to cause a conflict with the players and negatively impact their performance. If your Mads Hermansen and your manager is telling you to keep the ball at your feet but the fans are screaming at you to boot it long, what are you going to do?

Funnily enough, I was in the West Stand for the Bristol City game and there was nowhere near the impatience or incredulity on show. A few murmurs but generally a better understanding at what we were trying to, certainly more so than I experienced on Saturday. So perhaps it's just a Kop thing. But regardless, it wasn't a very good experience for me and I can see why our home form may well be weaker than our away form this season if it continues.