Manner of defeat hugely disappointing, however the performance, effort and commitment were a million miles away from the shite served up last season. Whilst it feels like 3 points dropped, before the game I feared a real hammering and after a minute, it looked like it was on the cards, but from then on what I saw was a team very similar to the title winning side playing with high tempo, energy and causing Arsenal real problems.
Tonight shows how far we have come, to go and slug it out against a top quality side Andy not just set up to park the bus and hope to come away with a 2-0 defeat. We had a real go and that showed me that we will do well this season and along the way cause a shock or two.
I thought Maguire, Albrighton, Okazaki and Vardy were superb, Albrighton showed you don't have to loads of tricks to be creative, Maguire looks a class act, strong in defence, reads the game well and comfortable on the ball, whilst Vardy and Okazaki were relentless in their work rate but also showed good quality and looked dangerous throughout.
Unfortunately for me, and I hate to say this about two legends, but Morgan and Mahrez have to be replaced immediately, their time has come to an end for different reasons. Morgan looks a shadow of his former self, age has caught up with him and it showed last night, whether a fit Huth is the answer or bring in a replacement, but it is clear whilst he remains in the side we will concede goals. As for Mahrez,what a talent, however he is also a shadow of himself, the fire in his belly has gone with us, he clearly needs a new challenge and whilst he stays we are playing with 10.5 players. Replace him with Gray, who doesn't have the talent but over 90 minutes would make more of a contribution to the team, the amount of times he ran into a blind alley, many times running back towards his own goal, there was little conviction in his play and I feel he leaves Simpson exposed defensively.
Finally Shaky, i felt he got the tactics spot on, his subs will be blamed for the result, however I felt regardless of the changes, we were on the ropes and it was a matter of time before Arsenal equalised. The extra firepower and quality was there for all to see. At 3-2 he tried to shore things up by bringing on an extra midfielder in place of Shinji, a sensible decision given the situation, however all that did was invite Arsenal onto us, relinquish territory and isolate Vardy, so rightly in my eyes he decided to replace a tired Matty James with Ian Nacho to try and stretch Arsenal a little more and provide Vardy with support and give us a chance to get out of our own half, unfortunately just after the change we concede 2 which I am afraid to say would probably have happened anyway as we were dead on our feet and Arsenal were camped in our penalty box.
On the who,e I feel on the evidence of this game that we will do well under Shakey this year, and he will learn from games like last night as all Managers do.
