I would like to see Kramaric given a chance over Ulloa I know he was our top scorer last season but don't think he offers much threat now.
What a **** game, **** performance and **** result Wait a minute.... Were top of the league Shows how far we have come and puts a postive spin on things
Agreed Proud 4 points from 2 away games ain't to shabby Being top of the Premier league after 22 games ain't too bad either lol 2 defeats in those 22 games too... Incredible it really is
I don't think penalties will be taken away from Mahrez unless he doesn't feel like taking it, im sure his confidence is shaken enough, so now is not the time to forcibly remove him from that duty.
Mahrez didn't look happy about being taken off, but it was done for the benefit of the team not for him .... it is about performing on the day, and he didn't. I was disappointed how much we gave the ball away in midfield when not under any pressure, trying to make the through ball for Vardy every time. Hopefully it wasn't a case of over anxiety about our position. We didn't need to play at a hundred miles per hour against Villa, many other teams haven't done that and won there comfortably. We had time to get the ball down and be far more clinical in our approach. Instead we gave it away and put ourselves under pressure. Still, there are a lot worse things than being top of the table! And we only need another 35 points to keep Claudio happy!
That was god awful. Ranieri's worst game for us by a country mile (says a lot that we get an away point that puts us top though) Okazaki off for De Laet was utterly barmy. Mahrez should have been hooked for Gray and we should have kept our feet on their throats. We became complacent and Villa were always in the game at 0-1. I didn't go because I had a wedding to go to last night and I missed the last 20 minutes of the game but i've seen their goal and it's absolutely typical Leicester.
..on another day we would have converted the penalty and Gestede would have been pulled up for handball.. even then it needed a deflection off Wes to beat Kaspar ... hopefully that's the worst 'unfortunate luck' this season... 'typical Leicester' would have lost that... Keep the faith...
Arsenal back top but could only draw at Stoke. .. still in there exchanging blws ..let's just enjoy it. ..
Okazaki probably had his best game for us, he was everywhere in the first half, so it seems really bizarre he was taken off, for De Laet of all people! Can never understand playing full backs on the wing, should have brought on an extra man in midfield. However, it may well have been the first time Ranieri has made a really bad tactical decision so I can understand it. Mahrez probably had his worst game for us and yet played most of the match, Gray showed more in a 5 minute cameo than he did all match. I hope his head hasn't been turned by someone.
Okazaki was hacked down a few times and was hobbling badly for a while so may have been taken off as a cautionary measure. Not sure how our attack would work if both Vardy and Okazaki were unavailable. I see no reason to mistrust CR's judgement.
Ranieri's worst game for us? The game was lost by players on the pitch, not the man on the sideline. Mahrez especially was poor and we gave the ball away far too easily and too often. We had so many one-touch passes played under no pressure that just pinged off to grateful Villa players ... and that is down to the coaching staff, not Ranieri. Okazaki had taken a knock so he was substituted probably with one eye on Wednesday's replay. De Laet was brought on to shore up our right hand side because we were getting outnumbered down that flank, with a view to using his speed to force their left hand side back, and to cut down the number of crosses into the box for their tall striker. Ulloa was then brought on to counter Gestede at set pieces. So I don't see that the substitutions were barmy. And it certainly wasn't down to De Laet that we conceded. We had chance to win that match three times over if we had shown some composure and hadn't been so anxious to get the ball up to Vardy all the time.
Even with this tactic, we still had the better chances, another day we would have scored twice before Gestede scored, just one of those days at the office. To be fair, we were owed a game of bad luck.
Pretty much agree with all of this .. as I said earlier ... they had a huge double stroke of luck with their goal ... first that the ref didn't blow for handball and secondly that it was the deflection of Wes that beat kaspar - he might well have saved the shot without it ... without that we'd have got 3 points and the penalty miss would merely have been an annoyance ... We didn't get beat despite not playing our best - but Vards is starting to look back to his sharpest and the goals will come - he was unlucky not to score with the chip that goalie managed to pull back and Okazaki scored from ... we move on ... positively.
Can you name worse performance from Ranieri? I can't. But that's hardly an awful thing because he's taken Leicester to the top of the league. Taking a striker off for a right back and then playing him right mid when we've just shelled out 4m on a right mid is barmy. We were in the position to kill the game off and we didn't. We sat back and got what we deserved.
Personally, I think Ranieri reads this forum, and after someone suggested the board was dying as we have nothing to talk about... He thought he would give us something to talk about It worked!
Like I said, I don't see it as having been a bad move, so no problem with Ranieri's 'performance'. De Laet is more of an attacking wingback than a right back, so he was playing in a position familiar to him. And to be fair, the move did work, and we were more solid down that side. If you were thinking that Gray would have shored up the defence on the right, then I would beg to differ. We haven't seen much of him yet, but he hasn't looked that interested in defensive duties so far. I'm sure we tried to kill the game off, but it backfired because we were too anxious to get the ball up to Vardy and gave it away too often.
Wait... so you thought that defensive minded substitutions was the right thing to do but we were let down because we were "too anxious" to get the ball up to Vardy? Surely that wouldn't happen if he'd contninued our attacking approach? Simpson was fine on the right as Kante/Drinkwater were covering just fine. As always. Mahrez was having a shocker and Okazaki was not. Keeping two up front was the right move. Lescott and Okore were having a mare whenever the ball was played into our strikers. Why stop that? In my opinion, Okazaki was sacrificed to get Mahrez into the game and it failed miserably.
I agree - Vardy wasn't his normal self as well, maybe we ruched him back a bit? Would have liked to see the Okazaki/Ulloa partnership more.
