Steve Cooper: The Tactics Thread

[fox_favourite]

I'm on the belief that Cooper doesn't really do tactical analysis too much and relies on players ability. He said he doesn't want to change much from last season, which to me indicates that he is relying on players to remember how to play that style as he can't coach it. Enzo was a coach, he knew the way he wanted to play and knew how to coach it. It was boring at times, but it was a pattern of play that was coached into the players. 

 

This is also the reason why he's going for prem experience rather than talent. He expects players to just know what to do, so he doesn't have to tell them. He might be more of a motivator type of manager. If that's the case his number 2 needs to be an excellent coach. This is why Pearson/Shakey  worked so well. One knew how to motivate, man manage and know the profile of player he wanted and was able to be a leader. The other was an exceptional coach.

 

I hope it works for him here, I really do and I hope our fortune picks up. But right now we look rudderless and with players arguing already, there is frustration at an early stage, and this isn't encouraging. 

[Happy Fox]

Cooper is tactically inept not even starting Ricardo is a major failing on his part. Deserves to get sacked.

[Fox1norfolk]

9 hours ago, Happy Fox said:

Cooper is tactically inept not even starting Ricardo is a major failing on his part. Deserves to get sacked.

What’s very worrying there appears to be no plan or structure for the players which they had last season. Possession football playing out from the back has been mostly binned and replaced by Mads kicking long which is then a 50/50 ball. Whether they practice planned moves and changing shape during a game, I have my doubts as it appears the Cooper plan is play your own game boys, the complete opposite of the Enzo. I think while he is in charge it will be a horror show

[blue army 1988]

7 hours ago, Fox1norfolk said:

What’s very worrying there appears to be no plan or structure for the players which they had last season. Possession football playing out from the back has been mostly binned and replaced by Mads kicking long which is then a 50/50 ball. Whether they practice planned moves and changing shape during a game, I have my doubts as it appears the Cooper plan is play your own game boys, the complete opposite of the Enzo. I think while he is in charge it will be a horror show

I think we saw against Tottenham we don't have the players to play it out the back in the Prem.

 

We kick it long to halfway line. Hopefully win the header and then pass it backwards to defence/holding midfielder and start from there. Long winded and risky process but less risky than the other team closing us down quickly.

[Fox1norfolk]

9 hours ago, blue army 1988 said:

I think we saw against Tottenham we don't have the players to play it out the back in the Prem.

 

We kick it long to halfway line. Hopefully win the header and then pass it backwards to defence/holding midfielder and start from there. Long winded and risky process but less risky than the other team closing us down quickly.

Well last season we played it out the back and we have exactly the same defenders this season

[Guppys Love Child]

1 hour ago, Fox1norfolk said:

Well last season we played it out the back and we have exactly the same defenders this season

You're spot on with your comment but......that was against championship opposition not superior Premiership, but I see your point.

 

I think our current 'hoof it halfway' as others have posted could just be Coopers way, (just a guess really) or in fact he's actually cottoned on that we're vulnerable when we trying to play it out from the back (as we saw more than once or twice playing EnzoBall last season, against as I've mentioned IMO inferior teams) but who knows for sure. 

 

However , I think the problem's run deeper.

 

We lack any real plan or style of play and omitting Ricardo is short sighted as he's proven quality, and whilst I like JJ ( but on the left) there is no way in hell he's the better player of the two to occupy the he RB position, the same goes for not starting Mavididi over Reid.

 

After our pre-season and last two games, to me it looks like we seem to lack urgency and show little desire to try and actually win games, we are just set up not to loose with a hope to nick something if we can. We start games with no tempo and allow our opponents to dictate the play.

As with all managers, Cooper is in charge of training ideas, along with match day tactics, style, team selections etc. and it pains me to say IMO he's getting a lot wrong at the moment. He needs to reassess the situation PDQ and actually adapt or he runs the risk of asking Santa for a job come December.

I was one of the posters when he was appointed asking others to 'at least give the bloke a chance'  and I still am...but only just, and if we see much of the same in the next two or three games I may start to question my stance. 

 

[Fox1norfolk]

3 minutes ago, Guppys Love Child said:

You're spot on with your comment but......that was against championship opposition not superior Premiership, but I see your point.

 

I think our current 'hoof it halfway' as others have posted could just be Coopers way, (just a guess really) or in fact he's actually cottoned on that we're vulnerable when we trying to play it out from the back (as we saw more than once or twice playing EnzoBall last season, against as I've mentioned IMO inferior teams) but who knows for sure. 

 

However , I think the problem's run deeper.

 

We lack any real plan or style of play and omitting Ricardo is short sighted as he's proven quality, and whilst I like JJ ( but on the left) there is no way in hell he's the better player of the two to occupy the he RB position, the same goes for not starting Mavididi over Reid.

 

After our pre-season and last two games, to me it looks like we seem to lack urgency and show little desire to try and actually win games, we are just set up not to loose with a hope to nick something if we can. We start games with no tempo and allow our opponents to dictate the play.

As with all managers, Cooper is in charge of training ideas, along with match day tactics, style, team selections etc. and it pains me to say IMO he's getting a lot wrong at the moment. He needs to reassess the situation PDQ and actually adapt or he runs the risk of asking Santa for a job come December.

I was one of the posters when he was appointed asking others to 'at least give the bloke a chance'  and I still am...but only just, and if we see much of the same in the next two or three games I may start to question my stance. 

 

Totally agree with your comments

[Aleksz]

You watch Ndidi build up deep in possession of a side that doesn’t even have much of the ball and you realise why Enzo kept him well away from it higher up the pitch, even at a lower level.

[The Doctor]

4 minutes ago, Aleksz said:

You watch Ndidi build up deep in possession of a side that doesn’t even have much of the ball and you realise why Enzo kept him well away from it higher up the pitch, even at a lower level.

yep. what Enzo did with Wilf was a masterstroke tbh. I've seen people say he played as an advanced midfielder under Enzo but in terms of role, he didn't. he still played a defensive midfielder role but on the edge of the attacking third. Any turnovers when we were on the attack were quickly turned back over as part of in effect a form of aggressive pressing, and he had talented ball players right there to immediately lay it off to. it had it's drawbacks, it can be very vulnerable to counters if that initial press is beaten (and that's where the inverted full back was really useful) , but it was a bit of genius in terms of utilising a talented ball winner (and technically limited passer) in a pass heavy team

[blue army 1988]

8 hours ago, Fox1norfolk said:

Well last season we played it out the back and we have exactly the same defenders this season

But we are in the Premiership this season. By your ideas, if we had kept the same team, we should win the league.

[Guest]

I'm not having that we don't have the players to play out. Better opposition yes but Hermansen, Vestergaard and Winks are all very good at receiving and passing the ball under pressure, as is Ricardo if he ever gets let out of Cooper's dungeon. The only one who you would say categorically does not suit it is Wilf but with Skipp coming in for big money maybe that's about to stop being a problem. I have no doubt we would concede goals doing it but we are also going to concede goals if we're constantly launching it to nobody in particular and having it come straight back at us.

 

Speaking of which, if anything I would say we don't have the players to go long because we have very little in the way of physical presence to hold the ball up, and if we're going over the top who is chasing it exactly, 37-year-old Vardy or the lightning pace of Ayew and Reid?

[cityfanlee23]

To be honest I'm trying to work out exactly who we can give minutes to this season in order to utilise some younger players, but also not end up with our best players sat on the bench. 
The issue we have is we have a lot of players who need game time but fitting them into the squad is going to be really difficult. If we sign a couple more players, say Fotis and El Khannouss, we then balancing is going to be hard. 
Everyone wants to see Alves get minutes and preferably Nelson but where and who gets dropped? We need an attacking outlet in midfield and Alves is not going to be getting game time ahead of Buoanotte and El Khannouss if the papers are right about just how close we are to confirming him. 
How do you fit them into that team? 

[FoxesPork]

33 minutes ago, cityfanlee23 said:

To be honest I'm trying to work out exactly who we can give minutes to this season in order to utilise some younger players, but also not end up with our best players sat on the bench. 
The issue we have is we have a lot of players who need game time but fitting them into the squad is going to be really difficult. If we sign a couple more players, say Fotis and El Khannouss, we then balancing is going to be hard. 
Everyone wants to see Alves get minutes and preferably Nelson but where and who gets dropped? We need an attacking outlet in midfield and Alves is not going to be getting game time ahead of Buoanotte and El Khannouss if the papers are right about just how close we are to confirming him. 
How do you fit them into that team? 

Nelson should be getting picked ahead of Okoli for starters

[cityfanlee23]

36 minutes ago, FoxesPork said:

Nelson should be getting picked ahead of Okoli for starters

I mean, sure we want him to get minutes, but Okoli has proven himself at a higher level than Nelson has so far, he's not been great so far for us, but Nelson still doesn't get into the team ahead of Faes/Vesty/Coady. I don't think even Coady will play more than 10 games this season. So either he goes out on loan or he rots on the bench. 

[FoxesPork]

14 hours ago, cityfanlee23 said:

I mean, sure we want him to get minutes, but Okoli has proven himself at a higher level than Nelson has so far, he's not been great so far for us, but Nelson still doesn't get into the team ahead of Faes/Vesty/Coady. I don't think even Coady will play more than 10 games this season. So either he goes out on loan or he rots on the bench. 

Fingers crossed for the first one but we’ll be relying or Rudkin to do some business 

[davieG]

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/telepathic-combo-should-lead-leicester-9515566

 

Telepathic combo should lead to Leicester City change as Jordan Ayew shows transfer need
Analysis from Leicester City's 4-0 victory over Tranmere, looking at Oliver Skipp, Ricardo Pereira, Jordan Ayew, academy talents, and the need for a balance in attack

ByJordan Blackwell
16:30, 28 AUG 2024

Steve Cooper has said the gap in quality between the Premier League and the Championship is the biggest of any first and second tier in world football. So when Leicester City face a side three divisions below them, never mind one, there’s only so much that can be gleaned.

City were confident, creative, and controlled throughout to beat Tranmere 4-0 and claim their first victory under Cooper. But it will likely have very little bearing on their fixture against Aston Villa this weekend.

However, that does not stop the conversations over which players did well enough to stake a claim for a starting spot at the weekend. Cooper has named the same 11 for each of City’s Premier League matches so far, but there may now be at least one change, with Tuesday’s performance showing why, rather than being the sole reason.

 

Signing for £20m, Oliver Skipp was never likely to be on the bench for too long. He got his first taste of life in blue at Fulham last Saturday, then started against Tranmere. Withdrawn around the hour mark, Cooper may have been saving him ahead of his first league start this weekend.

It would make sense. One of the difficulties City have had in periods during their opening two fixtures has been in building out from the back, moving the ball from the defence and through the midfield to the forward players. When they’ve not done it well enough, they’ve been bombarded by opposition attacks.

In that regard, Skipp helps. For starters, he’s very tidy on the ball. His passes don’t go astray too often. But more importantly, he looks to have a natural understanding with Harry Winks, his likely partner in the middle.

Throughout pre-season, and in the opening games, none of Wilfred Ndidi, Boubakary Soumare, or Hamza Choudhury developed a partnership with Winks that felt as comfortable as the one he had with Ricardo Pereira last season. They either occupied the same spaces as Winks, getting in each other’s way, or they didn’t offer an outlet to the defence as often as they needed to, especially when the opposition noticed Winks was pulling the strings and marked him more tightly.

While it comes with the caveat of City facing a League Two side, there were no such issues for Skipp and Winks on Tuesday. They were always in separate parts of the pitch, and always an option to the other.

While there’s five years between them, and while they only played 18 games together at Spurs, they’ve grown up with the same education. That perhaps helps them develop a telepathic understanding of how the other will play.

It was nice, too, to see Skipp eager to move the ball quickly, the 23-year-old playing lots of first-time passes to keep City’s attacks from ever feeling stagnant. With City putting the pressure on, there was an opportunity for him to play a role in the attack as well, and he linked play well around the box, while also making penetrative runs in dangerous areas.

Aston Villa, with their excellent, dynamic midfield, will be a big test for City. It feels like the Tottenham-developed duo is the best way to go to counteract it.

 

 

Ricardo and Mavididi push, but may fall short of league start
The controversial picks of Cooper’s early-season selections have been his decisions to leave Ricardo and Stephy Mavididi out of his Premier League starting line-up. Both were given opportunities to play on Tuesday, and both produced displays that will generate more talk around their potential inclusion this Saturday.

Ricardo’s omission to this point has generated the most chatter, but even while showing how good he is against Tranmere, it still doesn’t feel like he’s going to play against Villa. For a start, the role he had in the Carabao Cup is different to that which he’d play in the Premier League.

Cooper likes one of his full-backs to attack and the other to drop in and form the back three. To allow a full-back to attack, the winger ahead of them tucks inside when in possession and becomes a second number 10. So far, the attacking full-back has been Victor Kristiansen on the left, with Bobby De Cordova-Reid shuffling infield. James Justin becomes part of the back three.

On Tuesday, that switched. On the right, Ricardo went forward and Kasey McAteer became a number 10, while on the left, Luke Thomas stayed back and Mavididi stayed wide.

Leicester City's Stephy Mavididi scores their side's second goal of the game from the penalty spot
The shape allowed Ricardo to play how he used to when he first joined from Porto, gallivanting down the right, making himself a presence in the attack, playing quick football in tight spots to cause problems for the opposition. It was great to see.

But he probably wouldn’t be able to play that way in the Premier League. Cooper will want Abdul Fatawu to start and the Ghanaian is best when hugging the touchline, even if he does dribble inside and strike at goal on his favoured left foot. Plus, Kristiansen is the starting left-back, and he’s much more comfortable with roaming forward than he is at dropping into a back three.

If Fatawu and Kristiansen are selected, Justin is still the obvious choice to play at right-back. He’s better physically than Ricardo and so is more adept at dropping in to form a back three. Plus, right now, it does not seem to be in Cooper’s thinking that he could play Ricardo or Justin as a left-back, even though both have previously occupied the role in their careers.

For Mavididi, there was a frustrating first half against Tranmere in which he did not make the most of the space he was given. His step-overs didn’t fool his full-back and his crosses did not find City heads. After converting his penalty, he improved, and tore past Tranmere players with ease late on.

While he can play the role of a winger who doubles up as a number 10, it does not feel as natural to him as it does for De Cordova-Reid. Mavididi’s wait for a Premier League start may go on.

 

 

Ayew's striker performance shows the transfer City need
If City do the business they want to do, Jordan Ayew probably won’t play many games up front like he has over the past two matches. He has spent most of his recent Crystal Palace career playing out wide, and it’s from there that he will likely feature for City.

Because not only do City have Jamie Vardy, they have Patson Daka on the mend, and they have the intention of signing a number nine before the window ends. What Ayew did show on Tuesday night is the impact a new striker might have.

City made an offer for Fotis Ioannidis earlier this month and the Panathinaikos striker remains on the radar, if perhaps out of the club’s budget. But he’s a well-rounded frontman, capable of receiving the ball to feet and holding off defenders, just as much as he is a threat inside the box.

Ayew showed the benefits, and downsides, of having a striker who can hold the ball up. The Ghanaian came deep often, allowing City to better connect attacks, Ayew showing his qualities with his back to goal, bringing others into play and flicking balls around the corner. Plus, with Ayew dropping deep, it created pockets of space in behind for midfield runners.

But, there were a few too many occasions where City needed him in the box, only for him to hanging outside. His superb goal, and his chances to shoot, came from outside the area, but there were plenty of crosses into the area you would have liked to have seen him attacking.

What City need is a striker who operates somewhere between Vardy and Ayew, a player who is adept at receiving the ball to feet and using their strength to hold it up, but also knows how to find space inside the box and get on the ends of balls in. If City are willing to splash the cash, Ioannidis is that man.

 

145-game run may end soon
For the past 145 games, a run that dates back to October 2021, City have had at least one academy graduate feature. It’s been easy to do so over the past few years, with Harvey Barnes and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall becoming key players, but it’s growing more difficult.

City only kept up their run in the first two Premier League games of this season because Kasey McAteer came on as a late substitute. It feels like, at some point this campaign, the run will end.

There is a longer streak, which dates back to December 2018, of City including at least one academy graduate in their matchday squad. That could be kept up. But having a homegrown player on the pitch every week seems much less likely now they’re in the Premier League and none of their club-developed talents are key players.

It will be disappointing if it does end. Tuesday night, when five academy players got onto the pitch, showed that. Beyond the cheers for the four goals, the biggest noise of the night went to Will Alves’s substitution. It’s not just that a young player has fought back from a horrendous injury and made his first senior outing in more than 18 months, but that he’s a lad who grew up locally and has had his ability nurtured by the club.

There is only one objective for City this season, and that’s to keep themselves in the Premier League. Cooper’s approach to that aim is to turn to experience, and so City’s young prospects may get their chances less frequently.

 

Variety and risk-taking encouraged as City seek attacking balance
It may be some time before City have 71 per cent possession in a match again. In the Premier League, such dominance is not possible. But what the game did allow was for City to attack for the full 90 minutes and work on their patterns at the top end.

While they may not enjoy such possession and territory in league matches, if they’re going to win enough games to stay up, they still need to know how to attack with creativity. Goalless draws every week won’t keep them afloat, not with a points deduction.

At half-time on Tuesday, Cooper called for his side to be more daring in attack. He wanted to see more risks and responsibility taken.

“We could have been more of a threat in the first half with the variety in our attacks,” he said. “So Jordan made the difference by getting us in front, taking the responsibility and making something happen. I felt we needed more of that, whether it was dribbles, runs in behind, shots. To be fair to the guys, at half-time they took that challenge on board and were good for three more goals.”

Those are probably words that need to be heeded ahead of Villa. City will get much fewer opportunities to get into the final third in the Premier League and so they need to make the most of them.

There is a balance to strike. City need to have patience to find the right opening, but they can’t be too safe either. If they only have one meaningful attack every five minutes, they cannot afford for it to peter out. They cannot afford to be static and wait, they have to force the issue, and that's what Cooper was encouraging.

[Lesterlad]

What are tactics?😩

[Lesterlad]

On 27/08/2024 at 21:48, cityfanlee23 said:

To be honest I'm trying to work out exactly who we can give minutes to this season in order to utilise some younger players, but also not end up with our best players sat on the bench. 
The issue we have is we have a lot of players who need game time but fitting them into the squad is going to be really difficult. If we sign a couple more players, say Fotis and El Khannouss, we then balancing is going to be hard. 
Everyone wants to see Alves get minutes and preferably Nelson but where and who gets dropped? We need an attacking outlet in midfield and Alves is not going to be getting game time ahead of Buoanotte and El Khannouss if the papers are right about just how close we are to confirming him. 
How do you fit them into that team? 

I think that 11 would be good enough to win quite a few points with the right tactics. i agree wity the kitman as back up keeper, but would prefer Doris the Tea Lady as back up to VK