Do we know we're top of the league?

I haven't read it yet - I'll do the courtesy of reading it when I have some time. I'd like to read it properly rather than skimming through.

On the bigger question about Burnley, though - are they struggling purely because of being a possession-based team, or because they lack the necessary quality to be successful at it? I am inclined to think the latter. As I said earlier, they've lost all their attacking players from last season, the players they have signed are not up to it and they still have the nucleus of the aging players who took them down. No team that regularly plays Jay Rodriguez and Johann Gudmundsson in 2023 is going to survive in the Premier League, whether they play possession based or long ball.

In theory, possession-based football is the ideal counterplay to beat gegenpressing teams - by playing around teams and exploiting the space they leave to create chances. Think of how many times Man City have beaten Liverpool with their contrasting styles, for examples. It's why it struggles against defensive teams like Watford who just sit back, and why it requires patience and perseverance. Obviously in the PL you need the right calibre of players to pull it off, and why we will need to bring in players who are of a high standard in it. There's a reason why more and more clubs are switching to possession-based football - because all the stats show that the more you have the ball, the better your chances of winning.

Really good debate going down here. I like it.

I’m going to place myself firmly on the fence.

I’m happy with Maresca and how he’s changed the mentality of the players and squad and got us fighting for results again. It’s good to see.

I do understand some frustrations in the crowd though and with 99. Possession based systems are fine if you have enough movement and quality to unlock defences when you get to the final 3rd. Sometimes we look too ponderous and I’m still not convinced we have the quality in our wide strikers to get through the deep narrow block.

When we’ve looked our best it’s when we’ve been ahead and teams have had to come on to us. When they do we’re good at playing through the press and being effective on the counter.

But I do believe we need to give Maresca time to get more from the tactics. And I’m not writing them off until we get up and have a transfer window to strengthen. I share 99’s concerns that playing like this in the prem without the required quality is a risk and could backfire, but I’m happy to wait and see.

The crowd have always been moaners at the footy. You get that everywhere. Fans just want to see us create chances and too often we’re passive and don’t look like scoring. So I get it.

But we’re winning and so far it’s working, so I’m happy to give this project time and see where we go. I’m not one to moan at games, so you won’t find me in the list you read out Foxello. That said, I do understand the frustrations sometimes. I hope we can push on and look a bit more dangerous in possession and then everyone will be happy.

Big as you say, we’re top of the league and after last season, you won’t hear me complaining about winning football however we do it!

Actually most teams in the PL have generally employed a gengenpress- particularly teams outside the top 4. The high press yields results and it’s against the possession based teams where it’s most successful. Think of the goals we scored against Man City employing that very style (seem to remember us taking them apart the season after we won the title)

It gets results because you disrupt the ability to control the ball and you force errors. Now id say Man City are a bit of an outlier because they have spent billions and have the best team in the world. Your theory is absolutely right - but it’s not just Burnley that can’t attract the kind of quality to pull that style off in the PL - it’s everyone outside the top 4. That’s precisely why many have opted for the Klopp/Bielsa/Poch approach. It gets results against the very best teams - you limit the space, disrupt the possession and most importantly - as Leeds showed against us - you force mistakes from the back line.

Marescas approach is nothing new. It yields results in the championship as it did for Burnley because of the gap in quality. Whether it can yield the same results at a higher level for a club the size of ours is highly questionable

I’d be fascinated on your thoughts after reading the article.

By the way I’m aware Leicester weren’t exactly gegenpress back in the day - but under Ranieri particularly we did employ a very high pressing game from the front

Ill also add that I think footballing is evolving to incorporate the best of both worlds (and has been for a while) - winning the ball back with a very strong press and suffocating the opposition by controlling possession. The point is (and we can debate what classes as gegenpress all day long) - you need VERY good players to pull that off at the top level

For the rest it’s about defending from the front, winning the ball back quickly and the transition game. I guess that’s where the smaller clubs get success at the highest level. Cue Leicesters title win

Leicester will finish in top 7 teams in Premiership next season.

Interesting thread. I can understand why people get frustrated. We frequently look ponderous. We are at times incredibly slow in the build up. We get forward into promising positions, up to the edge of the opposition penalty box, then start passing backwards, frequently ending up back with Hermandsen; this is usually in the middle of our half rather than in the penalty area of course, he tends to get high enough up the pitch to places which would have given Kasper a nosebleed.

We were quite poor in the first half hour or so. We got better as the game went on.

What was disappointing was there were some passages of play which ended up with audible dissent from the Kop area - that's not good, how is that helping the team? I'm quite depressed by Foxello's description of the extent of what the idiots around him were saying, we don't get anything like that round me in the West stand; occasional groans perhaps but nothing approaching the vitriol expressed in the Kop. What exactly do these people want? I don't particularly like possession based football, but our manager is going to follow a Pep style philosophy, he's doing it very successfully so far, and he seems to be making a decent fist of getting players to play well, including waving a magic wand at Vestergaard.

If you were to transport the Neanderthals back in time to before the start of the season, and say that towards the end of November we will be top of the League by 3 points, clear of third by 10 points, with 14 wins I couldn't see any of them being unhappy with that - needless to say I'm more than content with where we are!

That doesn't stop me also being concerned about our direction of travel, if we are fortunate enough to be promoted I have grave doubts about what next season would look like as Man City lite or similar. If teams in this division had better finishers we'd have a lot less points than we have now, so I do worry when I think of what EPL teams might do to us. I'm also bothered that we still have Rudders in position; making decisions such as giving Hamza a 4 year contract doesn't fill me with any confidence that he's improving.

I do tell myself that we need to concentrate on getting out of this league first and worry about next season when it comes, but I don't like the idea of us potentially struggling in the EPL like Burnley are.

The article is a fascinating read. There's definitely a template there for other teams to use to frustrate us in terms of stopping Hermansen from playing out and man-marking KDH and Iheanacho or Vardy. Most teams in this league won't be able to execute the plan as well as Leeds (I still maintain that despite Boro's tactics, we had enough good chances to win - only Leeds have truly outplayed and out-tacticed us, IMO).

The important thing for me is that I suspect someone as invested in his philosophy and 'the idea' as Maresca clearly is will also know it's downsides and that you need to adapt when other teams nullify you. I would suggest he did take note of this against Watford and changed things accordingly - Justin played noticeably higher up and more like a conventional LB in the second half, giving Mavididi more support, and Ricardo and Hamza both seemed to play a little higher in supporting the high 8's. Maresca clearly has his ideology and won't deviate much from it, but he's learning as a new coach and I don't think he's as stubborn or arrogant as Rodgers was and I'm confident that he will take lessons from these games where we have struggled. I still don't think we are anyway near the finished article with this style of play - some will look at that and say that's a concern, but I still think we have a long way to reaching out ceiling. For me, that's exciting not fearful.

Every promoted team has to strengthen. We will too - we would very likely struggle if we didn't make a single signing. We'll need 5 or 6 PL quality players who are use to this style of play. I wouldn't be surprised to see us going to Man City, Arsenal and Brighton and looking at some of their players to bring in. The simple fact is right now, we don't know where we'll be in 6 months. But if we are talking about how we stay up rather than who we need to sell because we're still in the Championship, Maresca will have been successful with the first stage of the process. Then it's up to him, the club and the players to prove we can survive. Burnley are a warning sign, but we don't yet need to believe that they are a premonition for how things will be for us.

On the crowd - maybe I got unlucky with my choice of game. Maybe it was because we had lost 2 in a row then had to stew over the international break. Maybe it's because the weather was cold and everyone's brains were freezing. Maybe it was the geriatric boomers day out and it's not normally bad in there. But I was about two thirds of the way up in SK3 and it was incessant negativity from about the third or fourth minute throughout. It started when Hermansen kept the ball at his feet for about 20 seconds because there was no pass on and then it was set in stone for most of the game, only abaiting when we scored.

Part of me thinks it's a cultural thing. An older section of the fan base that are clearly use to a certain style of football who cannot see that football has evolved in the past decade or so. Because we had such huge success playing a counter-attacking style that relied on the pressing of Kante and Okazaki and the individual brilliance of Mahrez and Vardy, people think this should be our identity. But by the last couple of months of the 15/16 season, teams had started to find us out and we had the same kind of struggles breaking teams down that we do now (Ranieri, to his credit, realised this and changed accordingly). Once teams worked out how to beat us, we had to adapt or die and we've been trying to evolve ever since, with mixed results. But in their minds, I think fans still see this as the way we should always play, and anything that looks like 'tippy tappy sh&t' is quickly criticised.

What we say on forums like this is largely irrelevant - it doesn't impact on how we perform on the pitch, it's simply a chance to vent. In the ground, though, it's different - constant screaming and shouting does have an impact. When we have a manager who is teaching his players to be patient and keep the ball, but fans who want the total opposite, it's going to cause a conflict with the players and negatively impact their performance. If your Mads Hermansen and your manager is telling you to keep the ball at your feet but the fans are screaming at you to boot it long, what are you going to do?

Funnily enough, I was in the West Stand for the Bristol City game and there was nowhere near the impatience or incredulity on show. A few murmurs but generally a better understanding at what we were trying to, certainly more so than I experienced on Saturday. So perhaps it's just a Kop thing. But regardless, it wasn't a very good experience for me and I can see why our home form may well be weaker than our away form this season if it continues.

One additional point about Saturday, we passed the Winks test - managing to play Enzoball successfully with Hamza inserted into midfield. It perhaps could have made more of a difference if we'd been playing against one of the best sides in the Championship, but it was very encouraging all the same.