Defensive disasterclass ruined what probably should have been a point at the very least. Also Dennis injured. Good day at the office, I'm just going for a lie down in the middle of the road.
Our midfield and attack is absolutely fine and they’re all doing their jobs pretty well, in fact they’re all improving game on game. The season we went down we had an issue at the front and back, we’ve remedied the issue at the front, and we’ve now got strikers who can score goals and cause the opposition problems. But we’ve completely ignored the issue at the back and it will be our undoing. How frustrating must it be for the likes of King and Dennis to see their good work consistently undone, week in week out, by woefully substandard players. At the moment it’s like we’re asking Lewis Hamilton to win the Formula One championship with a big hole in his petrol tank. When will Gino learn.
Bad performances happen to a footballer, I get that. But today is one of those rare times where a player should come out and apologise for their own individual performance. William Troost-Ekong should be saying sorry to every Watford fan this afternoon. Just a shambolic display that was far more than 'bad day at the office' stuff. He clearly wasn't even concentrating for the vast majority of it.
Nothing that Ranieri, or indeed any coach, can do. We won't keep a clean sheet all season with this lot.
Absolutely no point in getting angry with WTE and Cathcart imo. They are doing the best they can. Obviously their best, especially WTE, is simply not good enough. That's not their fault. It's the fault of Gino and our recruitment policy. Just about every one watching WTE last year knew he wasn't good enough for this level. Our failure today was made in the summer.
Going forward superb, real drive , real desire to score defence poor, WTE why why why Dennis superb goal, hope he is not ****ed as well 2nd half was lottery, didn’t help us as we are about control and little flicks We should probably have drawn that
Well you will be punished at any level if you cannot defend . Let alone in the Premier league More key injuries too.
Leicester won't get an easier 3 points. They were poor and deserved to lose, but our defenders gifted them a win. How our owners can create team with such a paucity of defensive quality by design is beyond me. Half of our defenders should not even be at the club and the rest should be backup at best. We have a terrible defensive squad that has been allowed to develop over 8-10 transfer windows of conscious under investment by an ownership more worried with making 10m profit on a winger than saving 150m by not being relegated.
I don’t want him to apologise. I want the owners to apologise. I want Giraldi Mk2 to apologise instead of tweeting pointless platitudes and cliches.
Defensively awful - mainly WTE really. Lively going forward. I fear that may be a familiar tale. I think the game should have been paused for 20 mins. Those first 20 mins of the second half the conditions were not manageable. I think it is wrong and unsafe to impose those conditions on the players. Also, why no VAR check at least for Leicester’s fourth goal? Clear foul on Masina which a) started the move and b) led to a tap in the exact spot vacated by Masina who was still on the floor. They spent so long parsing out the Castagne one for Dennis’ goal and then seemingly didn’t even check this one. Is it considered too remote to the goal? Is that why? That seemed like a if not the decisive moment.
I’m sure it was checked like every single goal is. But it needed only a quick look by anyone remotely sane to determine that it wasn’t a foul.
Agreed, at least with Munoz (or indeed any of our other managers) although he had the same crap players to deal with, you could look at about 10 things in any given game that he himself messed up or got wrong. It’s hard to fault Ranieri regarding anything, he couldn’t actually do anymore and there is absolutely nothing he can do about just how useless our defenders are.
Scott has said categorically that him and Gino have learnt their lessons from our previous relegation and yet we havent spent any real money on a centre back since 2016.
I don’t know, how can you not blame WTE for his error for the first goal? That’s got nothing to do with footballing ability, it’s just plain stupidity which is inexcusable at many levels lower than the one he’s meant to be playing at.
Whilst I agree with the broader nature of this, its not like Cathcart and WTE are 2 blokes from the pub who won a competition to get a game. They have enough experience between them, even if they are sh*t, to do the basics. Ducking out of headers, simple communication, being even semi-aware of players around you....not standing 3 yards away from Jamie Vardy on the edge of the box. Its basic defending. Level 1 stuff.
You have got no chance at this level with Bachmann, Masina and Troost Ekong on the pitch. They take it in turns to make mistakes and the lapses in concentration will cost you in the Prem. You get away with it in the championship against lesser quality forwards. It’s bizarre how Pozzo binned the likes of Vydra and Tozser when we previously got promoted but allowed this trio of clowns to remain at the club. Bachmann recently publicly stated his confusion at being left on the bench but it’s clear as day why. He is the most indecisive keeper in the league. His indecision directly leads to a goal every time he plays, we’ve seen it against Brighton, Wolves, Spurs and today. How long will they let imposters hang around in this team when there is so much at stake?
Odds on a Leventhal article in the next week or so saying that the club are confident a fit Sierralta and Nkoulou will turn the defence around? That's after we've conceded another 15 goals to Chelsea and City of course.
This is the dichotomy of Dennis - he's brilliant, a brilliant player. But he's also a mentalist/stupid. We're in November and he's going to get a two-game ban in the not-at-all distant future for accumulation of yellows, as a striker. That's ridiculous. As I've said previously, he will be our next big sale, before Sarr - but it will be as an entirely chaotic good.
Why are you focusing on Bachmann today when the issues were 100% obviously with the two idiots in front of him?
Never a foul on Masina. It was a hard 50/50 and he lost it, simple as that. The bigger concern was his team mates meandering back with not one of them thinking 'Masina is down, I should get back and cover his position/Lookman' and WTE just staring aimlessly at the ball, in no-mans-land and completely oblivious to Leicester attackers stood near him (as was the case all game).
So so poor defensively. Three out of that back four today were the back four that got us relegated two seasons ago. It hasn't improved even though we ironically kept the joint best defensive record ever in the Championship last season. It's laughable how obvious it is that this is where our problems lie and have done ever since we got promoted six and a half years ago. Every time we go for the cheap/available option instead of paying good money for a competent defender. I know it's not the same but look at Liverpool- people laughed when they paid 70 million or so for Van Dijk, but it's been worth the money as he's the best defender in the league. The Pozzo's need to look at that and learn that if you want good players to help you survive, you NEED to spend. Our next two games are against two of the best teams in Europe, never mind the Premier League. I fear that last weekend was just a fluke, as was Liverpool in 2020. If we don't get suitable and appropriate reinforcements in January, we're going to go down.
Watching WTE for that goal is INSANE - it looks like they've scored about 3 seconds before they actually have, because he is literally looking the wrong way standing still. It doesn't seem possible, yet it happened.
That stupid brainfart moment is something he regularly displayed in previous games. The number of stupid mistakes a player makes, especially a defender, is the difference between good players and top players. He has shown that he cannot get those mistakes out of his game. I know that. You know that. Why can't Gino see it? He isn't good enough. That is not his fault.
He was at it all afternoon. I love Ranieri and still think its possible he keeps us up - and I don't blame him for today. But it was odd that he decided Louza and Cleverley needed to come off at HT, yet WTE needed to stay on when he was clearly away with the fairies. Also don't see the point in Tufan. He's been such a 'nothing' player. After their performances last week, I think Cleverley or Louza deserved more time over bringing him on.
Yes but, as @wfcmoog said, you simply can't coach those moments that WTE switches off out of his game. He simply is not good enough for this level and never will be.
That one was very hard to take. It's the best football we have played on our travels since Norwich - we dominated the game overall and still lost. Most of the blame will be on Troost for a rancid display, one of his worst it has to be said, but the entire defense was laid exposed and Leicester just had to tickle Cathcart and Troost and they were in. We got off to a bad start, Vardy should of scored with the header from the corner. then perhaps had King had a bit more space in the box he may of scored for us. What is so hard to take today was the basic lapses in concentration at the back. Why on earth did Troost DUCK out of the way of Leicester's first goal? Did he think Bachmann had called to claim or was he just hoping he didn't get his hair wet? It's not acceptable at any level, but especially the PL. Their second goal, was again a mix up in communication, but a great strike from Vardy all the same. Bachmann not at fault again as he tried to close down the space, but where was the defensive cover? Then we get a penalty - King scores and we are back in the game, a goal our overall dominance deserved. But, in typical Watford style, they go down the other end and make it 3-1 almost as quickly. Totally un-marked, easy as you like. That made it to half time with most of the Watford traveling fans' probably wishing they had stayed home. Second half was totally different. Not in performance, but the Weather did it's best to get the game abandoned, which, to be fair we would of taken at that point. It started snowing really heavily and it was hard to see the pitch marking let alone the ball. To our credit, we did get another goal, Dennis finishing off a good move with a great finish. Then, just like last time, we fall asleep at the back and it's 4-2 and game over. By that point, all we could do is pray the game was called off due to the snow, which actually eased off a little and the game was finished. Cucho really should of scored right at the start of the second half, and Leicester could of had a few more. It was an enjoyable game, but for us it's the same old story. We cannot defend. This has been a problem for almost four seasons now, we continue with aging mercenaries who plod about happy to grab a wage. Nothing on Claudio today - he did his best with the shambles we had at the back. Troost and Cathcart should be fourth choice at best - but we have nobody else. Ngloulou was a massive miss today. Dennis being injured is another blow - he has been the one bright spark today and I hope he isn't out long term. Gino needs to sort it out defensive wise and let Claudio bring in some new blood at the back in January. Until then, we have to prey we don't get sucked further into trouble. But with Chelsea and Man City both in the next week, staying outside of the bottom three will be very hard.
The flipside of this, to be fair, is that we were literally treated to a stupid puff piece Athletic article solely about how WTE employs a video coach who goes through every game with him after the fact, highlighting errors and improvements to be made, and yet despite all that, he has steadfastly refused to learn a single thing from any one of those myriad sessions. If anything, he has got worse. We know that he knows exactly, in intricate detail, what he is doing wrong - and yet, he continues to do it, again and again and in worse and more impactful situations. It's not even a case of ignorance - we can say that for a fact. Taking all that into account, you could say even his performances are malicious. An act of aggression - are we sure he isn't Luton in disguise?
Our centre backs are embarrassingly pathetic. Not worth getting vexed about it as it was being pointed out when Gracia was manager. Our owners are incompetent.
As I said on the shoutbox, Ranieri is Italian....defending is the cornerstone of Italian football. It is inconceivable that Ranieri won't be asking for better defenders in January. I just do not believe there is any scenario where that demand won't be made. So if we go into February in our current situation, the Gino apologists will have to face facts - the demand will have been made and it will have been ignored. There just is no longer any sane reasoning as to any other set of circumstances.
Totally agree, I love Claudio and you can see his influence even today, but I had no idea why Louza was coming off at the time and I still don't now. Cleverley too, but at least he hares about everywhere and is over 30, so there's some excuse?
My only explanation for that is that we’re so ****ed for defensive options, that benching WTE would’ve shot his confidence even more so that when we inevitably have to play him again he’s somehow even worse.
