Steve Cooper - New Manager

[StriderHiryu]

2 minutes ago, Richmondfox said:

He’s an excuse maker.  What is worrying is if he can’t see that his tactics/formation and player choice is incorrect and it’s always someone else’s fault or reason. 
 

All he had to do was Enzo ball with much less pratting around the back.

 

We might not have the personnel yet, so he has either sacrificed pre season to make a point or he is actually useless. I think it’s the latter. Playing 3 CDM every game and expecting them so suddenly get the ball to the attackers, then making the change with 10 mins to go. Winks is being stunk out by the players around him getting in his way or giving it away as soon as they get the ball. Surely he could be mixing it up with McAteer. Alves and Golding. 

 

I really feel it is this simple. Even Enzo himself during the run in started playing a bit more direct from goal with Mads encouraged to kick long more often. Being able to play out from pressure is extremely important in the Premier League, you will be forced to do it some times. But instead of only that way, go long a bit more often when under a ton of pressure against the better teams. Spurs for example ranked no.1 for high turnovers last year and signed Solanke who had the most forward pressures. So we are going to be up against it from game one in terms of being under pressure.

 

Today he tried to play out from the back without Ricardo or Vestergaard, and it worked out about as well as you would imagine that sounds like.

 

Ndidi playing further forward but not part of dual 8's, Kristiansen's inclusion and tinkering with Mavididi's position are also changes he's made that have taken the team massively backwards. Players are not standing in the correct positions either. With Enzo, they stood in poisitions with their bodies shaped to recieve the ball on the half turn, so that when trying to play it out, they could do it a few miliseconds faster, which is what created the spaces in the first place.

 

I could go on and on. The obvious reality is that we downgraded our manager massively. And what we see on the pitch is the inevitable result of that.

[Haywood_6]

Just listened to his post match interview. I think Steve knows just how desperate situation this is now & how badly we need to strengthen. I feel for him to be honest. Lens are no mugs and we just got outplayed all over the pitch. I don't really care about pre-season but we need to see a huge step up in our intensity. That team today looked lost, no game plan, no idea, nothing. If we do get relegated I at least expect some ****ing pride in our performances - similar to Luton last season. At least they had a ****ing go with what they had. 

[sbfox]

Turns out Enzo wasn't so bad huh? 

 

And by that, I mean we had recognisable patterns of play, attacking transitions and even a set piece threat. The Lens game was scary for the fact that we didn't have any of those things. 

[chapero82]

46 minutes ago, Wymsey said:

Think will beat Spurs and some might relax..

please get some help

[LVFox]

This is what happens when you just go for the cheapest, easiest hire, as opposed to putting any thought or effort into what's best for the club.

 

That and he has our worst squad in a decade.

 

If you have idiots making decisions, don't be surprised when those decisions are crap.

[StriderHiryu]

 

Not sure if you really want to listen to this or not

 

 

He does say "I won't sugar coat it, this was a poor performance."

 

But also thinks that some things we did defensively were OK...

 

 

Edited 10 August by StriderHiryu

[Wymsey]

2 minutes ago, chapero82 said:

please get some help

That's a bit inappropriate and unnecessary.

 

Am still standing by my prediction, without the such sour judgement.

Edited 10 August by Wymsey

[South Shire Fox]

14 minutes ago, funkyrobot said:

I get the lack of recruitment but Cooper could at least play his better players in their favoured positions. He had better players on the bench than in his starting 11. Mavididi is better at LW than Reid. Ricardo is our best full back but it also better playing next to Winks than Hamza. Verstergaard is our best footballing centre back, Alves was the best creative number 8 available today. Golding didn’t even travel. He picks a weaker starting 11 and then gives them no structure to play. 

He said players were playing out of position just to get them minutes. So id take that as players like Hamza will be involved while the bit part players like Alves and Cannon will be loaned out. Assuming 3 or 4 attacking players will be coming in

[winteriscoming]

Don’t get this opinion that Enzo is some sort of Messiah who would of kept us up.

We we’re so close to throwing away a 17+ point lead in the championship. 
He was so robotic tactically. We need someone who was flexible both tactically and with the system we played. Time will tell with Cooper but it’s not looking good although it is still pre season. 
See where we are after 10 games. If he’s given that long. 

[funkyrobot]

4 minutes ago, South Shire Fox said:

He said players were playing out of position just to get them minutes. So id take that as players like Hamza will be involved while the bit part players like Alves and Cannon will be loaned out. Assuming 3 or 4 attacking players will be coming in

Why did he bench Ricardo, Mavididi and Verstergaard and play less able players in their roles instead then? 

[South Shire Fox]

Just now, funkyrobot said:

Why did he bench Ricardo, Mavididi and Verstergaard and play less able players in their roles instead then? 

Dont think he rates Vestergaard at all. No idea about the others

[FoxesWalk]

It’s hard not to feel massively sorry for Cooper. Can hear the frustration in his voice, he knows we are nowhere close to having the squad to survive. Those above him are incompetent and that is nothing new to us. We are thoroughly unprepared for the season ahead. We need at least 4 first team quality players in key positions to stand any chance and that simply isn’t going to happen. We are missing 30-40+ goals from the squad as it stands, no chance we bring enough quality in given who is responsible for doing that, imo. That is if we even could afford to, which we can’t, because those above Cooper have been irresponsible and incompetent for years. 
 

If we bring in one player who is notably better than everyone else in our squad I’ll be astounded. 
 

I maintain it doesn’t matter who the manager is this season. Build for the championship, we are down regardless. Enzo would be in exactly the same position, playing a brand of football very likely to lead to relegation regardless (see: Kompany).
 

 

Edited 11 August by FoxesWalk

[Mickyblueeyes]

He’s a mediocre manager who couldn’t keep his job at a club which considers him a bit of a messiah. Like everything else at this club, he isn’t fit for purpose. 
 

The reality is we have an owner who needs to sell. We need him to sell. He has no business running this club as a business. His tenure has overseen a significant decrease in revenue. An increase in liabilities and complete collapse when it comes to financial responsibility. However you spin in, Top is the biggest parasite of the lot and has pissed away his father’s legacy. While Vichai made mistakes, disastrous ones, he fixed it. Or tried to. 
 

We are going into a PL season without one signing of note. Not one. Even Sheff United made one or two last year in Hamer and Mcatee. We go into the season with Rudkin bumbling along without a clue and the mistakes from two years ago again repeated. We deserve what we are about to go for until every person who says “we’ve got great owners” stops. 
 

So while Cooper isn’t inspiring or fit for purpose, we are very much here this season to make up the numbers. And it will be our last time in the league for a long time. I bet it’s a season of what ifs, “harsh decisions” and collapses. Overall, just not good enough. We’ll be gone before the last game and probably a fair few before then. 
 

No decent manager wants to work with an inept board. This is the best we can get. We have to live with it.

[Legend_in_blue]

18 minutes ago, StriderHiryu said:

 

Not sure if you really want to listen to this or not

 

 

He does say "I won't sugar coat it, this was a poor performance."

 

But also thinks that some things we did defensively were OK...

 

 

He's out of his depth here.  That is plain to see.  I'm still vastly underwhelmed by this guy.  Not even close to being whelmed.  

[foxfanazer]

It's a relegation season. The sooner you all come to terms with it the less stressed you'll be. Set up for failure 

[The Doctor]

25 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

We completed well for 120 minutes,  we can't know how that extrapolated over 38 games. 

But we had Enzo out threads left, right and centre all the way up to basically the Southampton game

we did, but let's be honest, that was people panicking about the slump and a few yer da types who think 4-4-2 is still the pinnacle of tactics. Having come up and having seen that we can at least compete with prem teams, things didn't need significant change, instead we've got this nonsense 

[FoxesWalk]

1 minute ago, foxfanazer said:

It's a relegation season. The sooner you all come to terms with it the less stressed you'll be. Set up for failure 

People directing their frustration at Cooper, when he is probably the part of the club least to blame for the current predicament, are yet to (or are unable to) accept this. 

[Silva Fox]

1 hour ago, Wymsey said:

Think will beat Spurs and some might relax..

Not a chance.

[foxfanazer]

2 minutes ago, FoxesWalk said:

People directing their frustration at Cooper, when he is probably the part of the club least to blame for the current predicament, are yet to (or are unable to) accept this. 

I was against the Cooper appointment but now he's here he's absolutely the least to blame as you say and he should get the full season regardless of the shite we serve up. Until the decision makers at the club are held accountable nothing will change 

[funkyrobot]

10 minutes ago, South Shire Fox said:

Dont think he rates Vestergaard at all. No idea about the others

Vestergaard is our best footballing centre half. If we want to play out from the back (he was attempting to do that today against Lens) then he needs to play as the others can’t do it to the same extent. I would’ve expected Okoli to have been signed as a faster version but it’s been clear in his first few games that he’s not a ball playing centre back. I’m not sure why he was signed tbh. 

[Iwebema]

34 minutes ago, StriderHiryu said:

 

Not sure if you really want to listen to this or not

 

 

He does say "I won't sugar coat it, this was a poor performance."

 

But also thinks that some things we did defensively were OK...

 

 

I do find his interviews refreshing, he's always very honest and open. I will give him that..but....

 

He already looks like he has no idea how he's going to turn this around unless we bring in alot of players.

 

Hes shown his tactical inability and you can just see in his body language he's lost. I am still routing for him as everyone should, we need to have some hope he turns it around as he isn't going to get the sack any time soon, but I think we've all been around football long enough to know how this plays out.

Edited 10 August by Iwebema

[funkyrobot]

2 minutes ago, foxfanazer said:

I was against the Cooper appointment but now he's here he's absolutely the least to blame as you say and he should get the full season regardless of the shite we serve up. Until the decision makers at the club are held accountable nothing will change 

Cooper has to take a lot of blame for that performance today. No obvious press, no clear tactics on or off the ball. Minimal effort at times, endless hoof ball. Better players benched. That was all on him. 

[trooky]

🤔Maybe this is all a clever ploy for the Premier League to feel sorry for us, so we avoid a points deduction!!!

[FoxesWalk]

8 minutes ago, foxfanazer said:

I was against the Cooper appointment but now he's here he's absolutely the least to blame as you say and he should get the full season regardless of the shite we serve up. Until the decision makers at the club are held accountable nothing will change 

Same, I wanted Corberan (who clearly we didn’t want to/couldnt pay the release fee for). Whoever was appointed should be staying to get us out of the championship under an embargo. That is where we are going to be in 1 year. Cooper is in, and he isn’t going anywhere unless he somehow signed a deal that says we can sack him for free, so better off giving him the benefit of the doubt in a situation virtually no manager would make a success of. 
 

I don’t see us having sustained period in the Prem again until the club is sold and the board is replaced. 

[lcfc_forever]

Absolutely share Cooper’s frustrations - the comment about not knowing if more players are joining us wild, how can the board not keep him more informed - but I don’t understand why he didn’t play two of our very best press-resistant players in Vestergaard and Ricardo when trying to play out from the back.
 

It’s clear to see Winks wants Ricardo alongside him, it’s not working with Ndidi. And we utterly lack creativity. 

 

If you play out from the back, go with a similar set up to the previous system. If you want to change it, then change it so you are playing to the the picked team’s strengths. At the moment, we’re getting the worst of both worlds.