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

Surely 3 wins would be ideal? 2 wins and a draw would be slightly less than ideal.

 

No apparently Nigel Pearson singlehandedly won Leicester the premier league, his work was so good the previous season. Even though he has spent half his career having punch ups in the dressing room and having angry as he is a diognosable psychopath with a short fuse.

 

To be fair we've also been a little unlucky with injuries.

Bachmann/Foster
Kiko/Ngakia
Sierralta
Nkoulou
Masina
Louza
Etebo
Sissoko
Sarr
King
JP

Could have been a decent side, from November onwards.

Didn't they offer contracts to Hughes and Chalobah? But yes I agree Tufan isn't looking like the ready-made replacement he should have been. A punt that went the opposite way to Dennis.

 

I agree with your overall point but disagree with option 1. I think we do need to make the change now, however, if we don’t and end up messing up the next three games, it’s all over, so I agree there would be little point in sacking Ranieri after this.

If that’s the case it would be best to let the season play out and start from scratch in the Championship.

 

We've scored in all but one of those seven defeats. If the club had provided a suitable defence then maybe we'd be able to keep a clean sheet and turn the narrow defeats into draws or wins. Something which we couldn't do under Munoz either.

 

You can name any manager and any attacking line from any era you want and this defence would still lose us the game, guaranteed.

 

We've gone from having the best Championship defence of all time, managed by someone with zero experience, to conceding 20 goals in 7 games, with the most experienced manager in the league.

I know the leap from Championship to PL is big, but I'd still expect a better return and some sort of coherent tactical plan to counteract our defensive deficiencies.

2.5 goals conceded per game with CR
1.4 under Xisco

'tougher fixtures!'

2.8 goals conceded per game against non 'Big 6' clubs with CR
1.5 under Xisco

Whatever way you spin it, and despite the poor hand he's been dealt with defensive recruitment and injuries, it's not good enough.

 

We couldn’t score in four of the seven games Munoz managed (but still conceded in every one), got completely outwitted by every team but Villa and Norwich who subsequently sacked their managers, but of course he would’ve suddenly had us rattling in the goals against the likes of Liverpool, City, Chelsea etc.

 

League 1 cloggers in defence. Ranieri must of had reassurance when he took the job that they’d spend on defenders come Jan and do your best until we get there. Now pozbury are flapping around making these defensive signings (should of been done at start of season). As for Ranieri tactics he learnt in a few games saints Arsenal that we never started to get going until we went behind, so started coming out on the front foot faster working for the most part but putting in good shifts with no points against the top teams. Yes he ****ed up at Brentford and seeing completely different tactics against spuds nearly worked but maybe he was expecting an onslaught and was just trying to keep the score low. If I was Ranieri I’d of never took the job on if I knew they weren’t backing me, I think he has the season if not I can’t see any other coach getting us out this mess.


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Don't think anyone, anywhere, ever, has suggested that we'd have 'rattled in goals against Liverpool City and Chelsea' with Xisco in charge but...okay.

 

Uncle Claudio is obviously trying to come up with the best solutions to get WFC out of trouble, therefore he has had to try different tactics in the attempt to get it right. However he has unfortunately come out on the wrong side of most of his games in charge so far, although in many cases by a very narrow margin.

There is every chance that UC has finally got his ongoing tactics sorted out in his mind and we have of course had the chance to strengthen so hopefully we can push on from here.

Having said all that we are still very much up against it thanks to injuries, Afcon and the six days from hell we are about to be needlessly put through for some unknown reason, as we have EIGHTEEN DAYS after that week without a scheduled match?

So through no fault of UC we are more or less being forced to play through a make or break SIX DAYS for our PL survival, when we are probably at best going to have to field a team who have not had a chance to play a competitive match together. Hence even if UC has got his tactics right it will possibly be to early for our new look team to have got used to implementing them.

Therefore we should probably not be too harsh on UC if we fail to gain enough points during this crucial week, but lets hope that we do come out the other side with all NINE POINTS!!!

COME ON U 'ORNNNNNNNSSSSSS​

 

Or strapping a Ferrari onto a donkey and expecting it to win the grand national....

 

Im not debating that there has been some bad luck with injuries - but a good number of those injured players (Masina, Kabasele etc) have looked ******* ***** even when they are fit. They are just not good enough and have shown that over the years.

Dennis was a talented player with great physical attributes beind held back by attitude issues. He was a gamble but you could see some of the logic at the time and it has worked out brilliantly. Tufan was renowned in Turkey for being fat and unfit - you just have to wonder what made them think he would be able to adapt to a league as quick and physically demanding as the PL. Same **** with Danny Rose and Kucka.

Hughes yes, but we seemingly didn't offer what he wanted. He is proving now that it would have been worth paying him.

Chalobah had question marks, but I cannot see in what possible way Watford benefited by allowing him to leave on a free. Particularly when the replacements coming in were as **** as Tufan and Kucka.

 

Leicester have been allowed to postpone their match with Everton because they don’t have the requisite number of players to fulfil the fixture.

We lost 4-1 to that under qualified team.

 

That’s a joke.

 

Will Hughes has the 4th highest rating of any Palace player on whoscored. Well played Pozzbury, well played. Adam Leventhal can F O too for supporting Hughes' sale. He knows nothing about football.

 

We don't know the ins and outs of the Hughes negotiations. If it was the case that he was refusing the relegation clause that helps protect the long term future of the club, then 4 decent appearances for an average Palace side doesn't change my view that selling for £8m was the right choice.

That's not to excuse the inadequate replacements, by the way.

 

Giving Hughes a contract without a relegation release clause would have been significantly less detrimental to the long term future of the club than giving long term deals to Fletcher, Gosling, Sema et al. Four players who will contribute virtually nothing to the this club over the next few years over the duration of their contracts.

If you want quality you have to pay for it, and we would rather piss it away on quantity.

 

Hughes won’t play a minute for them. So this is wrong.

 

In a parallel world where he hasn't started 5 league games for them maybe...

 

Was it a choice between one or the other? Did they decide to sign Fletcher, instead of giving Hughes what he wanted?

If the principle of the supposed new arrangement can be completely undermined by the demands of an average-at-best PL player, then we may as well **** it and go full Bournemouth.

And again, sticking to our guns re: Hughes *obviously* doesn't mean other mistakes weren't made.

 

Usually, HB, I think you think carefully about the issues. But surely this is way way short of the whole story. For instance, 3 of our players in that match were teenagers making their first team debuts.

 

Two of those teenagers came on when we were 3-1 down in the 74th minute and it was already game over.

Our team was actually pretty strong (for us). Morris was the only new kid on the block. All other players were experienced pros, against a Leicester side who had major selection issues. To lose that game 4-1 was shameful.

 

That Leicester squad also had an Tielemans, Maddison, Barnes, Lookman, Perez. Their midfield and attack cost in the region of £100m (not even factoring in Barnes who is an England international).

I'm annoyed by the result and by a lot of aspects of the performance, but you are talking as though we put out a full strength side and they put out their U23s. That just isn't remotely the case.

They had one more U23 player in their starting 11 than we did.

 

This. 1000 times this.

 

The way everyone has been talking anyone would think Leicester had a crap side out yesterday, but they still had a lot of more valuable and talented players on the pitch than we did, that is for sure.

 

There’s quite a lot wrong with this paragraph. It’s actually very funny.

 

Doesn't fit the rhetoric and narrative of an obstinate opinion.

 

I think our judgement of that XI is coloured by the fact that it was a Cup game, if we saw that XI in the league, even if you'd taken out Morris, we'd have been devastated, Kucka has no business starting, Tufan has no business being anywhere near the squad, and no Dennis means no party (even with Dennis there is frequently no party anyway!). That's even before taking into account the absence of the new signings, at least two of whom should be fairly sizeable upgrades on what we already had

 

No matter how you shake it up and defend it, the bottom line is, we shouldn’t be losing 4-1 to that patched up Leicester side, who they feel isn’t strong enough to play their next Premier League match, and the Premier League agreeing. It was a shocking result considering our team had 10 seasoned pros in it.

 

It’s not either or, but we have finite resources compared to others so why continually waste money? Everyone at the time could see Fletcher would not be able to contribute in the league this season.

It’s a bit churlish to call Hughes “average at best”.