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Surely as far as players go only Kante and Mahrez represent significant losses, and clubs have paid stupid money for our players. Manure can have as many of our players as they want at £80million a pop!
Drinkwater, at the time, was a big loss. I think the constant media attention selling our players is part of it as well.
 
Drinkwater, at the time, was a big loss. I think the constant media attention selling our players is part of it as well.
only because we didn't get the replacement in, he's done, we got the best of him and sold for a ridiculous fee
 
https://www.football365.com/news/leicester-big-six-premier-league-opinion

James-Maddison-Brendan-Rodgers-Ben-Chilw

Leicester gatecrashers could stay for breakfast and beyond…
Date published: Thursday 13th February 2020 8:05
leicester
“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”
It was one hell of a quote to open one hell of an article from Miguel Delaney, who details exactly how Europe’s super-clubs have drawn up the drawbridge to leave modern football, so the headline goes, ‘broken beyond repair’. He paints a bleak picture of a sport which is now so dominated by the haves that the relative have-nots are left irretrievably on the outside, their assets picked off as they stare up at a ceiling now made of the finest crystal.

That opening quote was attributed to a ‘senior figure from the Premier League’s ‘big six’ clubs’. The particular club is not named but it would be fascinating to know if that senior figure represented one of the three or four English super-clubs likely to miss out on the Champions League this season. In that scenario, they may well be left cursing Leicester again. And this time, there has been no perfect storm – almost impossible to recreate – leading to a thunderous title victory, but a sunny spell forecast almost a year ago when Brendan Rodgers took over a Foxes squad boasting the perfect combination of youth and title-winning experience. And this time the weather could hold in Leicester.

That feted fairy-tale victory of 2016 was actually elite football’s nightmare and there was clearly a collective vow to never allow that to happen again; during that bizarre season and the months following, four of the big six managers were upgraded, with only north London escaping the cull. Incoming bosses Antonio Conte, Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho were all given over £100m to spend and Leicester – who broke their own transfer record three times – began the next season with a mid-table finish feeling inevitable. Since their title victory, they have finished 12th, ninth and ninth; that they now lie in third feels almost as revolutionary as their triumph, given the double locks installed on the closed shop after the looting of 2016.

Leicester have undoubtedly been helped by Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal collectively deciding that DNA is somehow more important than managerial expertise, while Tottenham’s defiance of the odds always had a shelf life, but this is no wily old nag taking advantage of a few fallers; this is an expertly built squad now being led by an astute and ambitious manager.

This season has been so impressive that their trick of getting stronger after the sale of their most valuable asset actually looks repeatable. James Maddison could follow Harry Maguire out of the King Power this summer and you would back them to find a solution.

Eight of their first-choice starting XI are between the ages of 22 and 26; the other three are title winners. Ten of their first-choice starting XI (we’re counting Ayoze Perez as the possible outlier) are either Academy graduates or are worth (in some cases considerably) more than Leicester paid for their services. Beneath that XI, there are other young players ripe for development or profit like Dennis Praet, Hamza Choudhury, Demarai Gray, Kelechi Iheanacho and James Justin. Add another smattering of title winners and this becomes a ridiculously balanced squad. Their success feels sustainable. This time, the gate-crashers could be informing the council of a change of address.

Looking at the financial tables puts this scenario into perspective. Leicester are not just outside of Delaney’s list of the 11 European super-clubs, but outside of Deloitte’s top 20 Money League. According to their numbers, Leicester can boast only the ninth highest revenues in the Premier League, below Everton and West Ham as well as the big six, with barely more than a quarter of Manchester United’s money-generating capacity. In a season when Liverpool have been extraordinary, Sheffield United astonishing and Wolves still threaten to join them in smashing down the doors of the elite, it is easy to forget that Leicester absolutely should not be in third and cradling a ten-point gap to fifth. It defies all logic in a modern football world that doesn’t want too many Leicester Citys.
Sarah Winterburn
 

Former Chelsea and England midfielder Karen Carney, who retired after helping the Lionesses reach the World Cup semi-finals this summer, is writing columns for the BBC Sport website, working on Radio 5 Live and featuring on BBC TV this season.

In January, Leicester City defender Ben Chilwell was linked with other clubs - such as Chelsea and Manchester United - which as a player is a huge compliment.

However, the flip side of so much speculation can affect you.

I can't say what he is thinking or feeling. Nobody knows what goes on inside someone's head. But when I was involved in transfer speculation as a player it was in the back of my mind.

You can lose concentration and take your eye off the ball. You do not always realise it but it can creep in and your performances drop.

Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers has had to pull him up a couple of times this season because his form has dropped off a bit - he was not in the squad against Burnley and was only on the bench against West Ham United - but he is back in the team now and scored against Chelsea in the 2-2 draw earlier this month.

Overall, Chilwell has not done too badly this season and that's why other clubs are still interested.

Last season was good for him and he made his England debut in the friendly win over Switzerland at the King Power Stadium. It is massive when you become a senior international. It definitely adds pressure. We saw it with Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli as well.

When you first come on the scene, you are young, exciting and nobody knows much about you. Then you kick on and in the second season there is a label on you. You are an England player, a senior international and are expected to perform at the top level consistently. The opposition learn how to deal with you better and prey on your weaknesses.

There is all this expectation and pressure around you. The fun goes out of the window a little bit and you are not just rolling on momentum.

I found it the hardest part of my career. You are not young enough to be forgiven for mistakes but you are not old enough to have the experience. You are in the between age of trying to figure it out and it is flipping hard.

But Chilwell's versatility is really good for England so I do not think he needs to worry about his place at the Euros. January has gone now so he needs to get his head down and kick on a gear - Leicester have a tough match on Friday against ninth-placed Wolves (20:00 GMT kick-off).

Why Rodgers can't drop Harvey Barnes
Chilwell is forming a good partnership with Leicester team-mate Harvey Barnes this season. I was a winger like Barnes and I was heavily reliant on the full-back - you need them to feed you the ball.

That partnership only comes by playing together regularly. Barnes, who is still only 22, has had to bide his time. He only started one of the first five Premier League games of the season, but he has fought his way in and is now keeping Demarai Gray out of the team.

I think Barnes has been Leicester's best player since Christmas. I remember watching him in the 2-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur back in September. He impressed me and really caught my eye.

His impact was overshadowed by bigger names in the squad because he was not scoring. Now he has added end product to his good performances, contributing to 10 goals this season.

You can see his confidence has grown too. He has started 17 of Leicester's 25 Premier League games in 2019-20 and that shows Rodgers clearly has faith in him.

Harvey Barnes against Tottenham
In the 2-1 victory over Tottenham in September, Barnes played 82 minutes, making two key passes (level with James Maddison and Youri Tielemans) and had three shots in total - only Maddison had more (four). Fourteen of his successful 18 passes were in the opposition half. The touchmap above shows he got on the ball eight times in the opposition box.
When you are a young player coming in off the bench like Barnes, your main concern is to just stay in the team. There was probably a bit of anxiety before.

I cannot reiterate how important playing week-in, week-out is for any player's development. You have to play. And you can never give the manager an excuse not to play you - you have to give him a headache. Barnes is doing that because he's playing well consistently, working hard and contributing to goals. How can Rodgers not play him?

He needs to continue to work on providing that goal threat because that's the difference between the best and the rest.

Barnes is working with a good manager so he should be able to do that. A lot of managers just focus on results. I get the impression Rodgers coaches individual players to make them better, as well as the team. That does not happen a lot in football.

Harvey Barnes' stats in the Premier League this season
AppearancesStartsGoalsAssistsChances created from open playTotal shots (inc. blocks)Shots on target
231746264218
 
There's an interview with Kasper on Saturday at 12 noon on BBC1, Football Focus.
 
https://www.football365.com/news/leicester-brendan-rodgers-champions-league-opinion

Brendan Rodgers is both the best and worst manager. That has never been dependent on a shift in his approach or tactics, but a change in circumstances and situation.

An arm around the shoulder. A reference to “outstanding character”. A general air, not necessarily of superiority, but of someone who has at least three different quotes from How To Win Friends And Influence People framed and signed by himself, hung up around his house next to various self-portraits. It can either be the first or the last thing a player needs.

For a team in form, he is a sort of life force: a stimulus that encaptures and emits constant positive energy. It is fascinating to watch them feed off him, and him simultaneously thrive off them.

But that symbiotic relationship can become counter-productive. A side playing poorly needs something different, something more stark. Rodgers might alter his ways behind the scenes and in training, but the public determination to adorn every dark cloud with a silver lining stymies development.

One thing he does know is how to capitalise on a maximised stock. Just over a fortnight after the conclusion of the 2013/14 Premier League season, Rodgers signed a three-year contract extension. He was sacked within 18 months.

Apropos of nothing, Leicester were second at the start of December, having won 11 games, scored 35 goals and conceded nine. They were three points ahead of Manchester City and 12 clear of fifth-placed Wolves.

Then Rodgers was rewarded with a new deal. The Foxes have as many points as Crystal Palace since, winning four of 13 league games and scoring as many as they have conceded (19 each). The gap to fifth has been mercifully reduced to just eight points.

And, really, none among us can claim not to have let ourselves go after a few joyous months of a relationship.

As Leicester prepared to host Birmingham on Wednesday, this was a previously cheerful marriage that only recently drew envious glances from afar. That it had turned ever so slightly sour for some only emphasised that it was not just Liverpool who had become victims of their own success.

A run of five games without a win cannot be painted as anything other than disappointing, of course. Nor a sequence of three games without a goal, a strangely porous defence, an ineffective midfield, an isolated attack and no discernible pattern of play. The absences of Wilfred Ndidi and Jamie Vardy have evidently fractured something that was once wholesome and to be coveted.

But even as the Foxes laboured against their Midlands cousins, it was worth remembering how far Leicester had come. The one-year anniversary of Claude Puel’s sacking has only just passed and they are third in the Premier League, were beaten in one cup semi-final and, courtesy of a late Ricardo Pereira header here, are into the quarters of another.

The first half was not good enough. Four shots with none on target and almost three-quarters of possession was the sterile domination of Rodgers in excelsis. But the improvement after half-time was perceptible. Passes were more crisp, runs were more purposeful. There was a synergy that had been lacking for so long; where 11 random players once stood, a team slowly emerged.

They needed to be patient against a counter-attacking, defensively resolute team on a 13-game unbeaten run. They had to trust they would find a way, even if it inexplicably presented itself through the means of Marc Albrighton’s left boot and the right-back’s head. They had to persevere, to overcome.

It might be meaningless, but it might also reinvigorate a season that, in reverse, would be seen as phenomenal. If Leicester had started slowly but burst into life after Christmas to sit third, the outlook would be wholly positive.

Their only failure has been in meeting new expectations after far exceeding initial ones. In truth, they were never quite as good as beating Southampton 9-0, nor are they as bad as these past few months have suggested.

A regression to the mean was always likely. And perspective shows that mean to be a talented, well-rounded but flawed squad, coached by either a perfect or polarising manager. Rodgers will be in his element once more if the tide has turned back towards Europe. Just don’t give him a new contract.
 
https://www.football365.com/news/leicester-brendan-rodgers-champions-league-opinion

Brendan Rodgers is both the best and worst manager. That has never been dependent on a shift in his approach or tactics, but a change in circumstances and situation.

An arm around the shoulder. A reference to “outstanding character”. A general air, not necessarily of superiority, but of someone who has at least three different quotes from How To Win Friends And Influence People framed and signed by himself, hung up around his house next to various self-portraits. It can either be the first or the last thing a player needs.

For a team in form, he is a sort of life force: a stimulus that encaptures and emits constant positive energy. It is fascinating to watch them feed off him, and him simultaneously thrive off them.

But that symbiotic relationship can become counter-productive. A side playing poorly needs something different, something more stark. Rodgers might alter his ways behind the scenes and in training, but the public determination to adorn every dark cloud with a silver lining stymies development.

One thing he does know is how to capitalise on a maximised stock. Just over a fortnight after the conclusion of the 2013/14 Premier League season, Rodgers signed a three-year contract extension. He was sacked within 18 months.

Apropos of nothing, Leicester were second at the start of December, having won 11 games, scored 35 goals and conceded nine. They were three points ahead of Manchester City and 12 clear of fifth-placed Wolves.

Then Rodgers was rewarded with a new deal. The Foxes have as many points as Crystal Palace since, winning four of 13 league games and scoring as many as they have conceded (19 each). The gap to fifth has been mercifully reduced to just eight points.

And, really, none among us can claim not to have let ourselves go after a few joyous months of a relationship.

As Leicester prepared to host Birmingham on Wednesday, this was a previously cheerful marriage that only recently drew envious glances from afar. That it had turned ever so slightly sour for some only emphasised that it was not just Liverpool who had become victims of their own success.

A run of five games without a win cannot be painted as anything other than disappointing, of course. Nor a sequence of three games without a goal, a strangely porous defence, an ineffective midfield, an isolated attack and no discernible pattern of play. The absences of Wilfred Ndidi and Jamie Vardy have evidently fractured something that was once wholesome and to be coveted.

But even as the Foxes laboured against their Midlands cousins, it was worth remembering how far Leicester had come. The one-year anniversary of Claude Puel’s sacking has only just passed and they are third in the Premier League, were beaten in one cup semi-final and, courtesy of a late Ricardo Pereira header here, are into the quarters of another.

The first half was not good enough. Four shots with none on target and almost three-quarters of possession was the sterile domination of Rodgers in excelsis. But the improvement after half-time was perceptible. Passes were more crisp, runs were more purposeful. There was a synergy that had been lacking for so long; where 11 random players once stood, a team slowly emerged.

They needed to be patient against a counter-attacking, defensively resolute team on a 13-game unbeaten run. They had to trust they would find a way, even if it inexplicably presented itself through the means of Marc Albrighton’s left boot and the right-back’s head. They had to persevere, to overcome.

It might be meaningless, but it might also reinvigorate a season that, in reverse, would be seen as phenomenal. If Leicester had started slowly but burst into life after Christmas to sit third, the outlook would be wholly positive.

Their only failure has been in meeting new expectations after far exceeding initial ones. In truth, they were never quite as good as beating Southampton 9-0, nor are they as bad as these past few months have suggested.

A regression to the mean was always likely. And perspective shows that mean to be a talented, well-rounded but flawed squad, coached by either a perfect or polarising manager. Rodgers will be in his element once more if the tide has turned back towards Europe. Just don’t give him a new contract.

Excellent little article IMO. Pretty much what I believe - if it had been reversed and we started slowly followed by a triumphant ending, then the feeling would be different. That momentum would help next season as we saw with The Great Escape and That Season. There is a nervous, not-confident and slightly sour feeling after the recent run including the goal drought.

It's imperative we have a strong ending and don't crawl over the line otherwise I think we'll suffer next season with confidence, which can in itself be the difference between winning and losing. Momentum momentum momentum.

I also hope we can find an alternative way to play if we aren't doing well. Really switch it up rather than passing side-to-side. I wish we'd actually develop a more counter-attacking style sometimes. Commentators and "pundits" keep going on about "we all know that Leicester are an excellent counter-attacking side" - that's bullshit. We haven't played that way for more than two years.

If we play Nowich or Villa for example, why are we so keen on hogging the ball if they've got everyone behind the ball? Let them have it too, counter their tactics by not playing the possession game otherwise they're bound to have more energy and counter-attack whilst we huff and puff.

On the whole, In BR I trust. His first season at Liverpool was a learning curve. Then 13/14 he had them play even better football than Klopp is now. It was unreal. Let's hope second full season syndrome is amazing for us.
 
Yes, a good article.

Commentators and "pundits" keep going on about "we all know that Leicester are an excellent counter-attacking side" - that's bullshit. We haven't played that way for more than two years.

Commentators annoy me sometimes with their clearly out-of-touch comments. They're perhaps addressing an audience that largely know nothing about current trends with any given team, but it can sound like 'fake news' to those with a little more intimate knowledge. Fr'instance, Birtles waxing lyrical about Chilwell when Ben really hasn't been on-form of late.

If we play Nowich or Villa for example, why are we so keen on hogging the ball if they've got everyone behind the ball?

Agreed, all this patient pass pass pass stuff plays into the hands of a team that's sat back. I can understand the thinking but it kinda relies on the opposition making a mistake, being pulled out of position. And to do that, you have to try something creative. It's pointless (literally) just playing keep ball.

I said in another thread that I do so like it (sometimes with a begrudging respect) when a defensive side playing on the counter, breaks and thumps it in. 1-0 with 35% possession stats is still 3 points. It worked for us once. (Not suggesting a return to it btw)
 
Probably not the sort of thing that we want them to be talking about us ...


I read that earlier. I remember Tony O'Brien well. It's deeply upsetting to think that young City players we watched back then could have been dealing with such a scumbag and being told to brush it under the carpet.

Dave Richardson was so highly regarded as a developer of talent. Pity he wasn't a better man when that talent came to him for help.
 
Yes, a good article.



Commentators annoy me sometimes with their clearly out-of-touch comments. They're perhaps addressing an audience that largely know nothing about current trends with any given team, but it can sound like 'fake news' to those with a little more intimate knowledge. Fr'instance, Birtles waxing lyrical about Chilwell when Ben really hasn't been on-form of late.



Agreed, all this patient pass pass pass stuff plays into the hands of a team that's sat back. I can understand the thinking but it kinda relies on the opposition making a mistake, being pulled out of position. And to do that, you have to try something creative. It's pointless (literally) just playing keep ball.

I said in another thread that I do so like it (sometimes with a begrudging respect) when a defensive side playing on the counter, breaks and thumps it in. 1-0 with 35% possession stats is still 3 points. It worked for us once. (Not suggesting a return to it btw)

Couldn't agree more. I think it's just a case of being able to mix it up. But that would of course take a few transfer windows and constant teaching and training the squad. I think the best managers have the ability to move from their primary way of playing to other ways depending on situation.

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