Leicester City 4-1 Watford Fc - Fa Cup Third Round - 08/01/2022

By when those failed you would be behind him? Or shooting from the rooftops he's lost his mind by playing King at centre half?

 

We were one of the few clubs that voted against it .... the rest of the football league took their short term bribe from the big boys and were are now seeing the consequences

 

We can't keep drinking from that well. I think most would agree it was a perfect storm he inherited at Leicester. He took over a team that had won 7 and drew 1 of their last 9 games the previous season and kept it going. The biggest thing for me was he had team that just won the Premier League by 10 points, but left them just 1 point above relegation in the following season. A dramatic fall from grace with a Championship winning side.

Of course he still gets a lot of credit for winning the league, but I don't see the evidence where he built that side. It could have been Nigel Pearson who won the league had he not been sacked for non footballing reasons....who knows. I think it's fair to say he inherited something special at Leicester and basically kept it rolling. The following season he tried to instil a lot of his own ideas and thought they would never sack him because he had won the league. It was a big failure and players went against it.

 

I imagine some would. But I’d recognise the message he’s sending out personally. I lose my mind more at seeing Kucka, Cathcart and WTE line-up every week without fail.

 

Some of us said long before the match that we should pick a team designed to lose, and that's what he did. One kid picked to start who was worth a try (and did OK), two given an early chance for a bit of experience, JP given a longer outing than usual but withdrawn to save him from injury, and some highly-paid no-hopers brought in to make up the numbers.

An entertaining game which we deserved to lose, but not by 4-1 - but which reinforced our need for new defensive players. Mission accomplished.

 

We actually have the same wider opinion on this. (Apart from I’d keep him)

But you can no more discount what he did at Leicester in that title winning season than you can what he did at Fulham when they were in a mess. It just makes relying on the stats you’ve given flawed from the start and very selective to support your opinion.

 

Ranieri set up as being hard to beat against Tottenham and so nearly came off..... just done by a silly free kick, a great delivery in and a combination of crap defending and poor defending

 

It’s bizarre the lack of credit Ranieri gets for winning the league from some. If it was all down to Pearson isn’t it strange he couldn’t keep us up?

Weird you totally omit his two seasons at Sampdoria from the stats as well..

 

It's genuine insanity to present Ranieri's 'Premier League record' for judgement having purposefully left off the one season where he won the fuccking league in the biggest sporting odds upset ever. And me saying that comes with no comment either way on Ranieri's position in this moment.

 

Agree, equally it’s no comment on his current situation from me, but I find it absolutely mental Pearson gets more credit (or even any credit, frankly) for winning the league than Ranieri. Imagine being able to assemble a premier league winning team and style of play that was so good, that you didn’t even need to manage it yourself for the entire 38 games and it would still win the league, yet at the same time every other managerial job you’ve personally overseen yourself has in most cases been a failure.

 

Having been a football manager for many years I can't envisage Ranieri galvanising a dressing room which is what we desperately need in our situation.

 

Ranieri is obviously a top manager. Whether he has the desire/needs the stress of sorting our shambles of a team out is the real question.

 

The last time I looked Sampdoria are not in the Premier League. I've looked at his last 3 seasons in the Premier League. This is all consecutive. I've not chopped bits out. I think it's entirely relevant seeing as he's operating in England's top tier with us.

If he had a crap record, but the last thing he achieved was winning the Premier League, creating a Leicester team from a shambolic mess, that's a different thing, but he actually turned Leicester into a shambolic mess after winning the league. This, for me, is the big concern.

But, I agree, it's just an indicator of his recent form, but this is where you make your decisions based on this type of data. So I think it's fair to judge him on his last experiences in England, in the league he's operating in now.

 

Well regardless of league, you’ve omitted any success he’s had as a manger and only included his failures. You’ve purposefully only selected the data that supports the point you’re trying to make, which has the opposite effect of completely undermining it instead.

 

The criteria I've selected is fair. Managing in a different country is totally different to England. I've picked his last three Premier League campaigns, which shows a trend. 53 games is not insignificant and are his most recent. This only backs up why he's struggling at Watford. It's an indicator to suggest he's not really what we need.

QSF won the Europa League, but would anyone want him back?

It's a different story if I could see improvements on the pitch, but it looks like we're going backwards. I just wanted to see if there were similarities at other clubs, and it looks like there are..

 

Well Fulham didn’t do any better before he joined, or after he left, and then the season they were promoted again after. So by that measure all we know is he isn’t any worse than Joka or Parker.

 

The only question that needs answering is, is he the guy who will keep us up. I don't think he is and this is my only motivation in saying he should probably go now, ahead of the relegation trilogy games. This would give us a with the new manager bounce to get the best possible results from those games.

Look at the malaise in the performances against Brentford, West Ham and yesterday. There was no energy in any of these games. Even the Spurs game was poor. We just rode our luck. That could easily have been a 3 goal defeat. We're not not competing at a high enough level in any of our games, and even though our players are poor, I think we should be a lot more competitive then we currently are right now.

 

Having had time to reflect (and also having met Lloyd Doyley in Walkabout last night. What a nice gentleman he is). we are genuinely rubbish. Whether you blame Ranieri, the players, the board, whoever, it is simple to see how much of a mess we are in at the moment. As has been said, Ranieri is NOT blameless but is also not entirely at fault. The team selections and substitutions have been baffling at times and sometimes it seems as if we are just 11 men on a pitch who have never met each other before. But at other times we look like we're trying, we look like we know what we're supposed to be doing and actually give teams a real good game. It's so confusing. The Man City game was the best game against them we've had in years- for once we didn't roll over for them and we actually gave them something to think about, but then Brentford we were abysmal.

Can honestly say I STILL have no idea what Ozan Tufan is or what he does. All those Turkish fans who raved about him, implying he was God-like in his homeland, must be on something because that is so far away from what we've seen so far. He had to be told multiple times by Cleverley where to be or where to pass the ball.......

If Dennis gets injured then we have absolutely no chance

 

That’d be fine if the new manager bounce was a certainty. But it’s not at the best of times and with this squad I’d have even less hope. I don’t see it as something worth gambling on.

 

It’s worth the gamble if you don’t feel Ranieri will turn this around.

If we mess the next three games up, it’s all over for us.

 

Yeah, I was about to say - have we ever actually benefitted from a genuine new manager bounce? Anecdotally, I feel like we mostly wait for it to happen and then it never comes. I don't think, in recent times, Claudio, Xisco, Pearson or QSF experienced one, in truth. Pearson is obviously the closest, but even that took a bit of time and was more a slightly-prolonged purple patch once a team was settled on, wasn't it?

 

Once again the supporter’s crosshairs move to the parachuted coach put in charge of a terrible squad rather than the owners and the way the club is run.

It’s been nearly 10 years since they bought the club off the dentist, how many more years do we overlook the mess because they built us a temporary stand and gave us a nice pitch?

I’m siding with the coach this time. At some point, the fans will have to back a coach over the owners. I choose this one.

 

According to Twitbook, he bathes in the blood of vid/podcast virgins. Apparently there's an endless supply.

 

There is far too much exaggeration on here and that is a good example of it. The next three matches are very important and a very good opportunity. It would be serious if we fail to get much out of them. But after them there is nearly half a season. Maybe, and only maybe, Ranieri can get them to slowly turn around, rather than immediately. We are not a good side and it is all extremely iffy, but there is a fair way to go and it would not take all that much of a turnaround to be better than some of the others around us.

 

I don't think it really matters what we want. Poxbury aren't going to hold themselves accountable when there's a perfectly good manager to be sacked.

 

I don't feel it is an exaggeration to see the next three games as the most critical we've had all season. Games are running out thick and fast from here on in. If we can't get wins from the next three, then where are they coming from? We have to maximise and get wins from the next three games, or else we'll be cut adrift in the bottom three. There is already a 6 point gap above us. Newcastle are bound to get out of trouble with their blood money rebuild, so this is our last chance to get ourselves going.

Fail, and Ranieri will almost certainly be gone. We'll have to start from scratch with a mountain to climb. Once you're in that position it's almost impossible to get out of it.

 

But this was the attitude last time we were relegated. There’s always another game after this important one to rectify the problems. Until they run out. I’d hate to think the players have the same attitude (like they did last time).

If we lose all three games, we’ll be potentially bottom of the league. Below Norwich who can’t even play football. That should be the carrot.

I doubt the players remotely give a **** though.

 

The owners assembled a squad that comfortably secured promotion, then added Dennis, King, Sissoko and Cucho.

But unfortunately they (once again) mismanaged defensive recruitment, but I don't think that resolves Ranieri for 7 defeats on the bounce, with performances getting worse.

 

This is a huge tipping point - I don't think the importance of these next 3 games can be overstated. We are currently about 1/2 to be relegated. If we get 3 points or less in these next 3 games I'd suggest we will be 1/8 or something along those lines (unless it's 3 draws).

 

I'll only judge CR if we give him a premier league quality goalkeeper. Without that, nothing is his fault.

 

Its not just the defensive recruitment though - it is the entire spine of the team.

Having Sarr, Dennis and King up top in front a midfield of Kucka and Tufan and a defence of Kiko, Troost Ekong, Crapcart, Rose and Bachmann is like putting a Ferrari engine in a Reliant Robin.

 

Yes, I'm not entirely excusing Ranieri either, and it's something that is being increasingly considered, but at the same time what they actually did by your logic was assemble a squad that comfortably secured promotion, then removed two of the 11 starters of that comfortable squad, and then added Dennis, King, Sissoko and Cucho - regardless of the myriad arguments about the relative worth at this level of Hughes and Chalobah, they were both integral to the second half of last season and our promotion campaign, so it isn't just one way traffic where we were promoted and added some jewels, solely neglecting the defence (inexplicably) again - it is more complex than that.

 

If we mess up the next three games there is arguably very little point in sacking Ranieri. Nobody would be able to keep us up, and I don't see the point in appointing someone for the Championship as all our decent players will leave in the summer, our strategy would almost certainly need to be different in the Championship compared to the Prem, so there is no point preparing now, and the manager's confidence will probably be shot after losing 15 on the bounce.

There are two opportunities left to change manager this season. Option 1 is now, which I would be firmly against (who the hell do we bring in?). Option 2 is if we have a brilliant week next week but then fall of a cliff again - i.e. still a tiny chance of survival. If we mess up those three games, it's too late.