Fox1884

3 minutes ago, Awol said:

With Leicester signing Soumare in the summer, are they looking to cash in on Ndidi to top up their funds? 

Soumare isn't a DM so I certainly hope not! Soumare is more likely going to be brought in to play in a box to box role, we don't really have a player currently who can take the ball from deep and run it up the pitch

Makes me think we may be aiming for a midfield system a bit more similar to Liverpools (when it was good) - Destroyer (Ndidi), Quarterback controlling the play (Tielemans), the runner (Soumare)

If we sell anyone I think it is more likely to be Maddison, although we may not sell anyone, we need the squad depth anyway and Champions League would likely give us the funds we need that would usually come from a sale

Just now, Genie said:

Albrighton is like Milner, a steady Eddie. Solid 7’s every game.

The guy has been unreal for us, may not get the numbers but guaranteed he will put in a shift every game 

Just now, Fox1884 said:

We need to get at least 1 more goal this half, as no doubt Man Utd will get their customary penalty once Fernandes is on the pitch

Well there we go 

We need to get at least 1 more goal this half, as no doubt Man Utd will get their customary penalty once Fernandes is on the pitch

Rodgers has confirmed for us both Castagne and Ricardo are available for this game, only question will be whether Castagne actually starts or makes an appearance off the bench

No new injury news so that means the following are definitely still ruled out for us: Justin, Morgan, Fofana, Praet, Perez

13 minutes ago, Wezbid said:

Jack moves his legs into the opposition and then drops. It's a skill to be fair. Plenty will say it's getting his body in-front of the ball but plenty of it is simulation. Let's not beat around the bush here.

The guy is that good at it that when he's took a serious whack then it looks the same as non-serious in real speed.

I don't think we're a side full of it. Trez is a bad-one for it but in the main, we're no worse than any other team for it.

Jack is a master of tempting people in for the ball and then getting the contact. The problem is that sometimes he flops around when they've fairly got the ball and we're a player down in defending.

Same thing Vardy does, just moves his leg between the defenders, they catch him and he goes down

There are also plenty of fouls that people call dives where players like Grealish and Vardy run quick with the ball, they get clipped whilst running quickly and any small amount of contact can mess up the way they are running so it looks like they trip themselves

Just one of those things where you overlook it a lot when it is your own player, but you see it easily when it goes against you

1 hour ago, VillaChris said:

The interesting thing here is Leicester actually haven't been in that amazing form for a while.

Look at their recent results.....

1-1 at Everton- Not a bad point at Goodison in normal times but Fulham and Newcastle have both won there in last month.

1-3 loss home to Leeds- Leeds completely killed them on the counter attack.

0-0 at Wolves- Leicester had the better chances but really didn't create much and given Wolves general form for last 3 months not beating them currently is a missed opportunity.

0-0 tonight and again they didn't create much at all despite being near full strength.

Think the last 10 minutes where Liverpool basically imploded has created an illusion they're in better form than they currently are but guess beating Liverpool could be result they need to kick on and secure top 4.

It will be tough for us. We never match up well v Leicester when they're at full strength and the worry is they'll get an early goal and it will all click for them. We simply have to play it like we did in the away game and hopefully get some counter attacks going second half. Or get an early goal and defend well like we did v Arsenal but think Leicester will score a couple if we give them the space Arsenal did.

My thoughts haven't changed, a point here is a very good result for us.

You say that but 5 games in February with 3 wins and 2 draws

12 games in 2021 with 8 wins, 3 draws and 1 loss

Just 3 losses in the 20 games since the start of December, 12 wins, 5 draws, 3 losses

We had a bad week where we drew with Everton and lost to Leeds, but it is certainly not bad form, especially with how many injuries we keep having

20 minutes ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

Having Soyuncu back must be a real plus for you guys.

Definitely a good thing, but at the same time he wasn't too badly missed because Fofana really stepped up, quite lucky really that as soon as Fofana got injured Soyuncu was ready to step back in

I take it back guys, Grealish has nothing when it comes to diving compared to those we played tonight bloody hell 

Be interesting to see how knackered we are after that, wouldn't say we went 100% effort in but Slavia played well

Our lineup will likely be very similar to tonights

Schmeichel
Castagne, Evans, Soyuncu, Ricardo
Tielemans, Ndidi
Albrighton, Maddison, Barnes
Vardy

18 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Tielemans really is one diving whining word removed

*Has Grealish playing for his team

Slim Shady redemption tonight, be afraid 

No Vardy for us, Iheanacho starting

Jonny Evans and Dennis Praet also playing

41 minutes ago, Sulberto21 said:

I'm talking about the season Kante left. I'm guessing you used Mendy that season? Was Ndidi there? From what I've seen of him he's really improved over the last 2 seasons. So initially the drop off in your performances wouldn't have been that much had Gana been bought by you.

We signed Mendy for about £12m because he was putting up very similar stats to Kante in France, and he was someone we were actually interested in before we got Kante, then he got badly injured in his 1st game and we signed Ndidi in the January

5 minutes ago, Sulberto21 said:

Leicester should have replaced Kante with Gana.

Wilf Ndidi >

14 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Maybe late in the window if we haven't got better. Leicester fans hate him. Fear he would slip back and end up in similar bench role here but on a fat wage.

14 hours ago, mikeyp102 said:

Why?

I wouldn’t say we hate him, he is just incredibly frustrating and only seems to be able to impact a game when he comes off the bench in the last 20 minutes when the opposition are tired and he can run at defenders a bit more easily

He hardly ever makes an impact when he starts a match, which is a shame but he just hasn’t really developed like he was expected to

He is skilful and quick, but he is also a very selfish and tunnel vision kind of player, more often than not he will want to cut inside from the left and try to shoot from outside the box which from memory has only ever come off once

He is in the last year in his deal so at this point I imagine we are likely to either give him a new deal or sell, apparently we are after £15-20m to sell him

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

its the new norm, danny ward the 3rd choice keeper at Liverpool went to Leicester last summer for around £12.5m despite only playing 2 games in 3 years (and 0 so far for Leicester)

that's why the extra subs thing was a terrible idea that was rightly shot down, Chelsea have a string of £15m players in their squad who have spent 5/6 years on loan elsewhere and will never kick a ball for them

To be fair with regards to Danny Ward we were after a no.2 who could challenge and push Schmeichel, whilst at the time we bought him and also in recent windows Schmeichel has been linked with moves away so we wanted someone who could step up if he left or good enough for an extended run if Schmeichel got a serious injury

Unluckily for Ward Schmeichel has been in great form for club and country and barely been injured so Ward has only really got a chance in the cups

Also Liverpool are just masters at getting good money for back up players

5 hours ago, VillaChris said:

He's scored a good number of goals in other euro leagues, 9 for Monaco up to early March last season. Just didn't work out for him at Leicester, same for Kramaric and that Musa guy they signed at the same time. Suspect Leicester will sell him for a couple of million to another euro team anyway.

He was pretty good for us in the season he signed, but after that it started to come out that he had a bit of an attitude problem in the dressing room and was quite disruptive and moaned a lot

He was doing well at Monaco but then they got a new manager in who preferred to use Ben Yedder rather than Slimani, 1 year left on his contract so I imagine he will be probably be sold this summer, probably no more than £5m, mostly just to get his wages off the bill as he earns £80k a week

Kramaric just never got a chance with us really and a lot of Leicester fans think that it is one of the transfers we really messed up by letting him go so soon and Musa was unbelievably quick but had the footballing ability of a semi pro

Any striker we have had have all had the same problem, they just aren't as good as Vardy!

6 hours ago, pacbuddies said:

You failed geography at school I'm guessing!

Not quite sure why I put central Europe, I was meant to put Western Europe 

24 minutes ago, alreadyexists said:

@Fox1884 what’s your opinion on Shakespeare please my good sir?

He is a very good man manager and he usually is very well liked and involved with the players - which is why he got chucked in with the whole ridiculous player power thing when Ranieri was sacked

He is pretty well admired throughout the English game, and was involved in most of our recent success

I will say his actual managerial skills aren't quite there yet as he was pretty poor for us but he is very good at helping set up a team to be stable

Pretty good appointment!

Mackenzie and now Shakespeare... which of our other former staff are you getting next? haha

1 minute ago, WooJung said:

Given the geographical proximity I would imagine he has also scouted players from the Netherlands and maybe France and Germany. 

That said, I have no idea what their daily routine is, so I may very well be way off

Over the past 2 seasons the players they have signed have been mainly from central Europe - France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy,

I do believe however they share some our scouting network/system as they are our sister club so I think they have been able to be a bit more expansive in their scouting compared to other clubs in their division

1 minute ago, Tomaszk said:

How's this Mackenzie viewed in general would you say?

He's either very good or a magnificent blagger.

His constant moving around seems strange to me.

Seems like he is highly rated wherever he goes, we were rumoured to be considering bringing him back after our head technical scout left last year but we went with someone else, but he definitely has good experience hehind him as well

Technical scouting is obviously becoming a massive thing when clubs look at transfers now so having someone like Mackenzie who has been doing it for a while will definitely help, will just depend on the kind of players that Smith wants

He used to follow Nigel Pearson around - was with us when he was our manager, left and joined Spurs, then joined up with Pearson at Derby and then recently OH Leuven when Pearson was manager and stayed after he left there

6 minutes ago, Reivax_Villa said:

HUGE appointment I’m very excited by this news.

This story deserves its own thread and there are some in-depth articles about how he goes about his work.

His analytics discovered Mahrez.

Not technically, Steve Walsh found Mahrez when looking at another player at Le Havre which meant he was then tracked in the system

Mahrez was highlighted by the analytics team later on when we were looking for players of a certain criteria (wide player with 1 year left on his contract and matched criteria from the universal database such as progressive runs etc.)