Steve Cooper: The Tactics Thread

[Matt]

1 hour ago, coolhandfox said:

Not really sure what personal insults add to the discussion.

 

But each to their own.

This is the thing.

 

Whether people rightly or wrongly want to criticise Cooper, what he brings or his football are one thing, each to their own, everyone is entitled to their opinions but with that with come jibes about him or the Forest links.

 

By my own admission my criticisms of Rodgers and his football turn into bile and vitriol, but unfortunately Coopers onto a loser before he's even started and will get such petty insults thrown at him for little to no reason.

 

Edited 27 July by Matt

[JimJams]

13 minutes ago, Phube said:

Serial loser Ancelotti disagrees!

 

 

I did think of Ancelotti tbh, it's more a general rule, there will be plenty of exceptions. Also whilst Don Carlo doesn't have a set plan what he does well is put players in positions where they can be most effective, rather than  shoehorn players into a side. Cooper has so far squeezed players into a non cohesive structure. Early days though...

[Sol thewall Bamba]

26 minutes ago, Phube said:

Serial loser Ancelotti disagrees!

 

 

You what

[The Doctor]

1 hour ago, Gazza M said:

Ward is playing for shop window minutes. Mads is obviously number 1 and Jakob 2 when fit. It amazes me how people can't distinguish between the difference of preseason and full competitive matches. 

 

It is Coopers time to try things and see what works and what doesn't tactically. Traditionally the last friendly is the best indicator of what the starting line up will be first proper match. Until then pinch of salt please. 

putting Ward in the shop window minimizes any chance of selling him. noone watching him play will be more convinced to buy him than they were before

[It'sblueupnorth]

Why is he going along with the stupid experiment of playing ndidi as an attacking midfielder, get him in front of the defence doing what he does best

[nettle]

Unless he signs at least  one attacking midfielder it's going to be long and painful season. That midfield starting last night had zero creativity.

[The Doctor]

23 minutes ago, nettle said:

Unless he signs at least  one attacking midfielder it's going to be long and painful season. That midfield starting last night had zero creativity.

a midfield of workman can work, Liverpool won a title with three of fabinho, Henderson, milner and Keita as their cms most games, but they made it work with two electric wide forwards in Salah and Mane (ok, we can do that with Mav and Fatawu) and two very good offensive fullbacks. that is not Thomas and it's definitely not tucking Ricardo into a back three.

[splinterdream]

Kind of thinking, perhaps we should have had more friendlies, and had sorted ourselves into 2 x 11's if Cooper wanted to experiment, so players like Golding, Cannon etc got more game time to show what they can do 

[LcFc_Smiv]

8 minutes ago, splinterdream said:

Kind of thinking, perhaps we should have had more friendlies, and had sorted ourselves into 2 x 11's if Cooper wanted to experiment, so players like Golding, Cannon etc got more game time to show what they can do 

We will have played in 6 come the start of the season, possibly one more behind closed doors to come, you really don't need any more than that.

Edited 27 July by LcFc_Smiv

[splinterdream]

1 hour ago, LcFc_Smiv said:

We will have played in 6 come the start of the season, possibly one more behind closed doors to come, you really don't need any more than that.

I may have missed one, I only count 5

Villareal 

Shrews

Palermo 

Augsberg 

Lens 

[LcFc_Smiv]

We played Mansfield at Seagrave before heading out to Evian.

[Sly]

10 hours ago, jonthefox said:

Surely he needs to take a look at whats available to him. 

He’ll see them every day in training. 
 

These games should be about getting patterns of play together and working on being a cohesive unit. 
 

Last season despite getting beasts by Liverpool 4-0, we clearly had an ideology on how Maresca wanted to setup and who he would trust. 

[Gevans_97]

When managers (Enzo) have one attacking way of playing and are unwavering in their approach: “he doesn’t have a plan B”

 

When managers (Cooper) are pragmatic and adaptable depending on the team they have: “he don’t have a philosophy” 

 

Ah, FoxesTalk.

[Lillehamring]

18 hours ago, Bluearmyfox28 said:

It’s starting position. Having the ability to pull away from the defender out wide and dart in with space to run into, compared to starting more centrally with not much space to drive with the ball, instead working in half spaces.

I get that, but it's an adjustment that a player at this level should be able to cope with - it's not such a huge difference that it should turn a player from great to poor/mediocre.

 

FWIW, i thought he did as much in the shrewsbury game as he did in the palermo game.

[Lillehamring]

14 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

Why not try one of your creative midfielders from the academy/who you've signed Steve? 

 

I don't think I've been less enthused about a new manager for a long while. 

I don't think it was wrong for Cooper to give Ndidi a go in that position, at this stage of the season, despite it not looking great (Certain members of the media though Ndidi was great!).  I guess he went for experience over youth. But, I would have pulled him at half time, or dropped him back took off soumare and gave Alves a run, or even tried swapping ndidi and soumare.  It was a bit of a strange call.

 

If what he said means we're likely to end up with a 15/20M pound player in that spot, it's all a bit moot.  I don't see him starting the season with Alves or Golding in the first XI (for the above reason, but also because it's such a huge gamble it could prove distracting) and i hope that he won't need to play Ndidi there.

[Lillehamring]

14 hours ago, Sly said:

Having watched the highlights, do we actually have any tactics? 

I don't know how the highlights came across, but the majority of the game was basically attack (us) v defence (them), so tactically it was fairly limited (as we discovered last season) - the game plan was actually sound, the issue was really application in the final third.

[Lillehamring]

12 hours ago, splinterdream said:

Bit harsh on Golding, the time he's been on the pitch he looks a real prospect

Bear in mind that you're commenting on a post that is screaming 'doom' based on two pre-season games.

 

There's nothing of much substance to take away from anything yet - problem here is that fans are obsessed with this belief that everything has gone to sh!t and we're doomed to end up in administration or non-league.

[Tielemans63]

9 hours ago, filbertway said:

Now he's had a chance to see just how awful our back ups are, hopefully he's going to concentrate on using the good players and honing the talents of the 3 quality youngsters that he's got available.

Agreed. When you look at just how shite and lazy someone like Soumare is, why wouldn't you give someone like Braybrook a crack, could hardly be any worse than Bouba?

[Lillehamring]

11 hours ago, GingerrrFox said:

I’ll admit it, I’m very concerned at the moment. Cooper seems to have not done his research on the club and how Jon Rudkin operates, we aren’t great at moving players on and we haven’t been for some time. Our squad is massively bloated yet Cooper is talking about needing reinforcements but the amount of turnover he is talking about realistically isn’t going to happen under our Director of football.
 

We’ve been told before he came, that Cooper is a great manager to bring youth through, well anyone who knows football will tell you that Nelson, Alves and Braybrooke are some of the most highly rated youngsters in English football.
 

Firstly, Nelson was getting games last season under Maresca and proved that he was already very good at Championship level, so what do we do, we renew Vestergaard on a 3 year deal and bring in Okoli. We’ve now got Vestergaard, Faes, Coady and Okoli blocking Nelson’s path to the first team (left Souttar out the equation as he appears to be going on loan). 
 

Alves is the most exciting talent to come out of Leicester’s academy in recent memory, he’s been ear marked for the top for years, the lad is pure mustard. By most accounts he’s only got 1 year left on his contract and the wolves will most definitely be circling. Can you really blame him/his advisers for not committing to a new deal, when we are absolutely screaming out for some creativity in the middle of the park yet we’ve got a manager deciding to play Ndidi as a 2nd striker and Will is getting less than 15 minutes in a pre-season game against Serie B fodder?

 

Sammy Braybrooke is possibly the least outrageous to not be used in pre-season but it still rages me that we’ve got an England age group captain not being used in pre-season over the likes of Hamza and Soumare. We know Hamza’s limitations and Soumare has made it pretty clear that he’d rather be anywhere else than at Leicester. Sammy is very similar to Harry Winks, so you can understand that they may not be suitable to play with each other in a double pivot but Winks played a lot of football last season and we know how good he is, does he really need to be playing big minutes in pre-season football when that time could be better spent furthering Sammy’s development?

 

Never mind the lad Golding coming in highly rated from Chelsea and being brought on in the 89th minute of a pre-season game. I know it’s early but I’m going on record that this ain’t gonna work out with Cooper.

Not sure what this has to do with tactics but....

 

Nelson, Alves, braybooke and golding have practically no first team experience - nelson is by far the most experienced with just a couple of hundred minutes in the championship.

We're talking about the PL with a likely points deduction, having lost our top player and having to adjust to a new manager - these players are more likely to be loaned out than to even make the bench this season.  Cooper has a lot to work out and a squad of regular first team players to get to match fitness, now is not the time to be 'bringing youth through'.

 

The amount we've seen so far is healthy: he's having a look at the young lads, getting them involved, giving them some confidence and experience - i'm not sure what the problem is?

[enmac]

Know it's off topic, but Chelsea are currently playing Celtic in the "Leicester City" derby. (0-0 after 20 mins)

[Lillehamring]

10 hours ago, pmcla26 said:

Think he might be falling into the trap that Dean Smith was falling into. 
 

Soumare isn’t a bad football player, technically he’s very good. Problem isn’t with the ball, it’s without it. In training it’s probably not so much an issue as you’re not always playing at 100% intensity like in matches where it becomes exposed. 
 

Maybe he’ll have seen enough now. 
 

The other point is maybe he’s just using him as a place holder in pre-season games as we don’t have many options there currently, but wants the rest of the shape to be the same. 

He hinted at this being the case (not naming names, but it seems the most likely area) - we seem to be looking at players who can play forward, so it's likely ndidi will start next to winks and we'll either set up with a tight front three (mav/daka/fatawu - as against shrewsbury) or a more spread attacking 4 (mav/daka/CAM/fatawu - as against palermo)

[Lillehamring]

10 hours ago, GingerrrFox said:

As an example from last night, why’s he bringing on Luke Thomas to play RB? Luke Thomas will never play RB for us in the Premier League so why waste time doing it in pre-season? It’s piss poor, you’ve got to be ruthless as a manager, if Luke Thomas isn’t gonna feature in your plans, **** him off until the Director of football does his job and moves him on. Thats his remit not Cooper’s, Cooper is here to build a coherent, winning football team, that’s what managers do in modern football, the rest is down to the football club to sort out. 

Thomas was playing more as a RCB in a three, and wasn't too bad, he played some nice progressive balls.  But the reason he was played out of position was to give him, justin, ricardo and VK some game time - better to pay out of position than not at all.

Just because you don't rate him doesn't mean he's not in Cooper's plans - we have such limited funds, we can't afford to replace everyone, we need to have some squad depth that doesn't involve spending any money.

[Lillehamring]

10 hours ago, Gazza M said:

Ward is playing for shop window minutes. Mads is obviously number 1 and Jakob 2 when fit. It amazes me how people can't distinguish between the difference of preseason and full competitive matches. 

 

It is Coopers time to try things and see what works and what doesn't tactically. Traditionally the last friendly is the best indicator of what the starting line up will be first proper match. Until then pinch of salt please. 

Sadly, too many of our fans now are so stuck in a pattern of hate, anger and complaint that they'll find any excuse to criticise and moan.

[Lillehamring]

8 hours ago, It'sblueupnorth said:

Why is he going along with the stupid experiment of playing ndidi as an attacking midfielder, get him in front of the defence doing what he does best

They only way i can rationalise it is that palermo played very deep and ndidi was there to (as he did under maresca) get into them and turn over possession high up the field - in this respect he did a great job, the problem is that what he offers in breaking up play he lacks in touch or passing range.

[sylofox]

49 minutes ago, Lillehamring said:

Sadly, too many of our fans now are so stuck in a pattern of hate, anger and complaint that they'll find any excuse to criticise and moan.

Like a player he gets 10 games from me. Unless we get battered in the first six.