City v Cardiff match day live

Just to be clear, I do understand what Maresca is trying to do, I have read the informative tactics thread on Foxestalk, which is highly recommended for anybody who wants a better insight into his philosophy.

For whatever reason - lack of movement, players still trying to adapt to the system after years of having Brendan's 'tactics' drilled into them, players not having the requisite qualities, an unfortunate injury to a key player resulting in us having a wantaway donkey in his place, whatever the reason, for periods of Saturday's match we were playing what I can only describe as Rodgersball. Pedestrian passing across the back 4 in our half of the pitch which threatened our goal more than theirs. Numerous opportunities to break forward quickly with their defence out of shape spurned in favour of passing backwards to guarantee retaining possession, also guaranteeing the next time we move the ball forward it's against a perfectly positioned, well-drilled set of players. I can't believe that's what Maresca wants hence I'm labelling it Rodgersball when it happens.

So don't get me wrong if I do that, it's still very early days and I am hugely encouraged by progress so far and starting to look forward to see how matters develop; it doesn't mean I'm yearning for a return to the glory days of 15/16 and 45% possession, or am expressing some sort of strange desire for Pulis style hoofball. I am slightly puzzled as to why he picks Vestergaard over Souttar, but in Enzo we trust I suppose.

More concerning to me at present is us still having a useless DoF in position, with less than two weeks remaining to address the outstanding issues in the squad. Hopefully he will come good too.

We're a work in progress who have had a great start to the season, it's usually a sign of a good team who can win without playing particularly well; being able to turn around games late on in matches is also a very useful trait to have. We will no doubt have sterner tests to come though. Onwards and upwards hopefully!

It's so early in the Season to really state where we are, the 10 Game mark is when we normally can really give a consensus on the Team and Manager.

Still, a Record Breaking LCFC Team is a good start and winning when it's been a struggle is a really good sign.

You might disagree but the 3 League Teams we've played may not have been top quality but they were well drilled to play against us and we still won, a sure sign Enzo's playing style is working

comment by Foxello - "a miserable Rodgers obsessed weirdo" (U6985)
posted about 19 hours ago
If people genuinely can't see the difference between the style of play that Maresca is implementing, and the dross that Rodgers was churning out for the last 2 seasons, then I am a little bit lost tbh.

Marescaball is (or at least will/should be) about using the ball with purpose - trying to create space for attacking players to run into and to always have a man free so that you constantly have an overload. Granted, it isn't quite there yet in terms of execution, but the idea is pretty obvious and Maresca has made that clear on many occasions. By the end of Rodgers tenure, the 'plan' was to give it to Maddison and hope he comes up with some magic, or wait for the opponent to create us the space. In a nutshell, what we are doing now is largely proactive, whereas what we were attempting previously was reliant on the opponent giving us the space that we are now trying to create for ourselves.

Again, I've said this before, but the tactics thread over on Foxestalk is a really good explainer for what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Sadly, some of our fans aren't willing to be patient and just want instant gratification from 'getting it forward' (not accusing anyone on here of that btw but there have been enough rumblings in the crowd from people who's idea of football is to launch it 70 yards for a 36 year old Jamie Vardy to run on to, like a 15/16 redux). That's not what we are about now and frankly no team at this level would ever give us the space to implement this anyway, so we have to be clever and patient. That's what we are doing under Maresca, but the impatience and unwillingness of some fans to give the process time to operate is undermining this effort, particularly if it starts to seep through to the players (thankfully this does not seem to be happening....yet).

Also, worrying about the Premier League at this stage is just unnecessary. We have at least 9 months before we need to concern ourselves with that, at which point we will be able to bring in a better calibre of players who have the technical qualities and intelligence to pull this style off to a higher standard. In many ways, this season is a transitional one, the kind of season we should have had last season if the club didn't have a collective omnishambles.
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I mean you can just address this to me directly if it’s easier

You have a very short memory Foxello because you’ve clearly forgotten how we started under Rodgers (which is what I’m referencing here) not how things ended. I’m talking about taking Southampton apart, dominating teams by winning the ball back high with our pressing and using the extra man in attack to create the overload. I’m not talking about how things ended when our only answer was to get the ball to Barnes and hope he finds Maddison or cuts inside and scores

Now maresca is different to Rodgers but their philosophies are actually similar in many ways. It’s not a swearing to suggest that. We’ve also seen similar vulnerabilities to Rodgers - the defensive high line leaving us wide open to the quick counter for example

Not saying Enzo won’t be a success - merely suggesting Rodgers is from a similar football school. I’m also not suggesting we should play everyone off the park - BUT we should be getting out of this division easily and probably would have done so under a different manager given the quality we have

Next season will be the rest - not this one

comment by Don'tUpsetTheAppletonCart (U13248)
posted about 18 hours ago
Foxello
Thank you for that, I couldn’t agree more with you, a very honest and succinct overview.
I have steered clear of the ‘Rodgersball’ and ‘Enzoball’ comparisons as I don’t think they are even in the same postcode.
Hopefully the more sensible and patient supporters will understand the upheaval that our squad has undertaken to get to this point ( on and off the pitch - ignore JR etc).
I am very positive about the changes and Enzo ( as I was in a discussion with 99 prior to him even being interviewed), teething problems YES, bumps in the road YES…… but do I think we are a better, tighter, more robust squad than last season YES.
But it’s absolutely no help to start saying this squad wouldn’t survive in the PL if we go up when it’s still August 🤷‍♂️.
Let’s just recognise where we are at and fully get behind Enzo and the players 100%

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I’m merely suggesting that from what I’ve seen (high line suicidal defence) that we would get taken apart in the PL. Be honest - all the teams we have played should have scored 1 or 2 goals against us - they just lacked the finishing quality

Foxello is right - IF we invest in much better defenders when we get promoted this season then I think we will be fine. But the defensive vulnerabilities from last season are still here because we haven’t got the quality to play that way at the highest level.

Again - let’s see what happens. I’m not expecting us to smash every team 5-0 playing like Man City. Just saying that I’m not worshipping the ground Maresca walks on purely because he isn’t Rodgers. Next season will tell us everything

comment by Foxello - "a miserable Rodgers obsessed weirdo" (U6985)
posted about 17 hours ago
comment by Don'tUpsetTheAppletonCart (U13248)
posted 57 minutes ago
Foxello
Thank you for that, I couldn’t agree more with you, a very honest and succinct overview.
I have steered clear of the ‘Rodgersball’ and ‘Enzoball’ comparisons as I don’t think they are even in the same postcode.
Hopefully the more sensible and patient supporters will understand the upheaval that our squad has undertaken to get to this point ( on and off the pitch - ignore JR etc).
I am very positive about the changes and Enzo ( as I was in a discussion with 99 prior to him even being interviewed), teething problems YES, bumps in the road YES…… but do I think we are a better, tighter, more robust squad than last season YES.
But it’s absolutely no help to start saying this squad wouldn’t survive in the PL if we go up when it’s still August 🤷‍♂️.
Let’s just recognise where we are at and fully get behind Enzo and the players 100%

UTF
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The only real comparison I can see between Marescaball and Rodgersball is that both are possession based. That's literally it. You may as well compare Leicester 15/16 to peak Pulisball Stoke on the basis that both teams played without the ball.

At least Maresca has the intelligence and hindsight to get his ducks in a row, with the right players for the roles he wants. Brendan Rodgers persevered with Danny Ward as a sweeper keeper for 7 months before realising it might not be a wise decision.

FWIW, I actually think we will end up closer to being a loosely based copy of De Zerbi's Brighton rather than Pep's Man City. Brighton play a lot quicker and rely on the counter more than City do - look at their goals from yesterday as an example. It's a better, more authentic style of play than the mechanical, robotic style that City sometimes play IMO. Ironically, we could have got De Zerbi in last Autumn but decided to stick with the fraudulent one
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I mean to say that the only similarity between Rodgers style of play and Marescas is that they are both possession based in just utter garbage. It’s not even being objective

I’ve mentioned the high line defensive line, playing from the back, the high press (think about his first 2 years), it’s just nonsense to try and make out that there aren’t similarities.

99, I didn't refer to you in person because you weren't the only person to make the comparison between Maresca and Rodgers, either on here or elsewhere.

If you are referring to the first 18 months - 2 years of Rodgers rather than the last 2 years, then sure, there may be some similarities there. I don't think anyone would have a problem with returning to the style of play we played, particularly in the 19-20 season before lockdown (I think the quality levels dropped during 20/21 but we were still doing enough to pick up wins, including the FA Cup win, before we ballsed it up for a second year in a row). The last 2 years of Rodgersball were an utter shambles, though, hence why I don't think people can make the comparison to what we are seeing now - which is the comparison I am seeing being made, not between now and 19-21, but between now and 21-23). You also have to bare in mind that Rodgers benefitted from having 3 months at the end of the 18/19 season to start to implement his ideas, and he inherited a much better squad and situation from Puel than Maresca has from him. In the end, the Rodgers philosophy died because of Rodgers himself, not because it was inherently bad.

What we are seeing under Maresca isn't yet convincing or enough to say we are definitely going to be promoted. If we are still struggling to get past second gear in a month's team, we will start to drop points and lose games, the murmurings will get louder and there will be more pressure placed on him to get it right. Marseca himself has said that we are only somewhere between 10-20% of the way there in terms of what he wants to see from us, so there's a lot of work still to do and I suspect the biggest critic of our recent performances will be Maresca himself. But we are doing enough to win games which, as Nuneaton points out, is the sign of a good team - playing bad/mediocre but still getting the points.

Of course we are not ready for the Premier League. No club in the Championship is. Even though we probably have a squad better than 5 or 6 of the teams in the PL, last season proved that it isn't enough. That's why this is an ideal transitional season to get things right so that we can be in a better place to take on the challenges that next season will pose IF we do get promoted this year. We can get away with things at this level that we couldn't if we were still in the Prem.

For me, it's not just about results this year, but also seeing an improvement in other aspects of the footballing side. Mainly to see the rotten complacency culture that Rodgers had allow to not just fester, but was a chief architect of, be removed and to see real leadership return. Look at how much of a leader Conor Coady is being from the sidelines, compared to what we had from members of the supposed 'leadership group' last season. I also want to see Seagrave being properly utilised, the ridiculous injury situation of the past 2 seasons be reversed, and have a squad of players who actually want to play for us, and are not here to just pick up their wages or are just using us as another step on the ladder (see how Maresca has ostracised players who clearly don't want to be here from the matchday squad - Castagne, Soumare, Daka). It's all part of the transition for me - moving from the last remnants of the destructive culture Rodgers installed and left behind, and making us (to coin a phrase) fearless again. It's very early days, and time will tell, but so far, I am seeing small improvements that will hopefully become big ones.

Ok that’s fair - I mean I absolutely am not comparing the last 2 years of Rodgers tenure to this season - more like his first 18 months. When we had a clear philosophy for how we wanted to play and we implemented it. I’m seeing quite a few similarities in the approach, but there are also differences

I don’t think the culture and everything that was wrong about last season is all down to Rodgers. It’s too simplistic an analysis for me. The leadership and culture comes from the Top and it was Rudkin that formed an unhealthy close working relationship with Rodgers that allowed the rot to truly set in. Also in Rodgers defence (and I don’t say that often), our hopeless DoF had allowed a number of players to run their contract down which was always going to create a toxic atmosphere with players who didn’t want to be here playing week in/week out.

That situation alongside the stupid contractual decision Rudkin made with Kasper (while rewarding an over the hill Vardy with ludicrous wages) contributed to us having no real leaders left in the squad and a group of players we had to rely on who had their eyes on other clubs. It was a ridiculous situation

Everything else can pretty much be lumped on Rodgers - but he was allowed to wreck the culture

I like how we have these lengthy arguments and then eventually concur that we essentially agree with each other, with only a few minor points of contention

For the record, I don't think the style of play as of right now is a good as peak-Rodgersball between 2019-21. It's probably closer to where we were under Puel for most of his tenure - lots of possession but not always much penetration or 'qualiteeeee'. The point is though that the style that Marseca is implementing has a much higher ceiling that should eventually see us playing the kind of football that successful clubs play. He also seems to understand that there is a lot of work to still, he has referred to that on many occasions, even after wins. But I absolutely stand by my assertion that we are playing a much better style already under Maresca than we did at the backend of Rodgers.

I'll agree that the behind-the-scenes failings, contacts being allowed to run down and the lack of transfers last season were a part of our eventual relegation. But a truly elite-level manager, rather than a phony with a nice suit and a good contacts book, should have been able to navigate those issues. That Rodgers couldn't manage that, and then compounded a bad situation with his own antics and arse-saving, shows what he really is IMO.

Let's never forget the way Rodgers conducted himself last season - the press conferences where he absolutely refused to take responsibility; where he openly criticised players and said they weren't good enough; when he talked about getting to 40 points as being a 'huge achievement' when nobody but Tim Sherwood was tipping us for relegation; persevering with chronic underperformers whilst maligning others; complaining about 15 degrees in October when he refused to make any substitutions during the hottest day of the year in August. All of these compounded a bad off-field situation and made it 10 times worse, IMO.

Completely agree about Rodgers being allowed to wreck things, though - enablers are often just as bad and just as much to blame as those ultimately responsible.

I should add, thought that whilst the quality and consistency isn't quite there yet, some of the movements and phases of play have been genuinely exquisite and probably of a higher standard than we managed even in Rodgers early days. We just haven't had the consistency or final product to make them count. That will come in time, though. When it does, I genuinely don't see any club getting close to us, certainly not at this level.

I am beginning to feel like we all need a group hug and to tell each other that we are in this together….😛
I cannot argue with any of what you both (Foxello and 99) have said. Very coherent and fair points.
At the end of the day we have to let Enzo continue to bring his philosophy into the club from top to bottom, but as Foxello states some of the play we have seen has been better than we have seen in a long time, it’s now about building on that plus consistently performing at higher levels than others in the Championship.
One thing that sticks out is that if you are not in his immediate plans then don’t bother cleaning your boots ( yes I know this is very 1976 but you know what I mean) and he will concentrate on those he sees as long term for his team….. also I think we will see another step forward when Coady returns.

It’s been good to see and get involved with these discussions and let’s enjoy whatever the season holds ( but am I the only one worried about a Rotherham banana skin at the weekend?)😂

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