Russ Glares at the Defensive Coach
Leicester City at home and once again we have been
chosen for the Friday night game to get the ball rolling after the international break. It’s been a couple
of weeks of relative calm after our drubbing up at Sunderland. No one has been
checking every five minutes to see if we’ve signed or sold someone but there
has still been the odd story to keep us interested. The transfer window was now closed, only it
wasn’t quite because there was still ways of getting rid of deadwood.
I’m not sure how it happened but Moussa Djenepo left to rejoin Standard Liège
in Belgium. He has certainly been an interesting player over the 4 1/2 years
that he’s been with us. The odd moment of brilliance mixed in with long periods
out of the squad and cameo appearances where not a great deal positive happened.
When he signed, he was an absolute maverick
winger who did everything off the cuff and started off with two brilliant goals
against Brighton and against Sheffield United the left us thinking that we
might have the next Sadio Mane on our books. Over time though, all that
spontaneity was coached out of him in an attempt to try and make him more of
her team player in Ralph Hasenhüttl’s system and basically all that happened
was that the things he was good at were taken away and the things he wasn’t
good at, didn’t improve that much.
A brief renaissance at the start of last season by being versatile enough to
play a couple of games well at fullback, lead to one of the most ridiculous
decisions by the club in recent memory, in awarding him a new three-year
contract and entirely predictably, he has delivered absolutely nothing apart
from one goal in that ridiculous win against Manchester City in the Carabao
cup. I’m not saying it’s Moussa‘s fault but that win did more harm than good
because it kept Nathan Jones in a job for longer than he should’ve been. Moussa
always seemed a very happy positive presence and you can never accuse him of
not trying or not wanting to do well but it was never going to happen. The only
way it could’ve turned out differently is if he had maybe been used in the
centre of the pitch and just been told to go and create havoc but that was
never going to happen. I don’t know who is going to take over the role of doing
step overs multiple times until you tackle yourself, but I’m sure someone will.
Turkey, as usual, have different rules to everybody else but it’s handy in this
case because it ebanled us to get Tall Paul out of the door and away to
Trabzonspor. He’s gone on loan in the hope that he does well and Trabzonspor or
anyone else signs him next summer. £18 million
we paid, just 8 months ago. That’s what
you get when you have a non-football person in charge of a transfer window
making desperate signings for a manager that you are about to sack. As I’ve
said many times before, you only get the best out of a player like Paul if you
set the team up to play to have strengths and if you don’t, then you are going
to get absolutely nothing out of him. I guess the financial hit is deemed worth
it as the cost of getting this reminder of Rasmus Ankersen‘s incompetence at
that time, out of the door and Sport Republic see it as a decent price to pay.
Good luck to Paul and in Turkey.
Back to today and Leicester have had the same start as we have in the Championship,
playing five, winning three, drawing one and losing one. However, the narrative
around Leicester has been a lot more positive for some reason. I don’t really
understand why to be quite honest because even in the opening three games where
they had 100% record, they didn’t play particularly well. There are of course
some decent Leicester fans but if anyone in this division as a fan base where
the majority think they are too good to be in it, it will be them. I guess it’s
understandable in a way having won the Premier League and the FA Cup within the
last 10 years. Enzo Maresca is the new manager, in his first managerial role
and it’s his job to try and repair the absolute shit show inherited from
Brendan Rodgers who was down there with Nathan Jones and Ruben Selles as the
worst performing manager in the Premier League last season given the resources
at his disposal. A few of those resources, namely James Maddison, Youri
Tielemans and Harvey Barnes have left for the Premier League.
This is a game where I feel that Russell Martin has to go out with a slightly
more pragmatic approach so I’m really hoping to see both Shea Charles and Flynn
Downes in midfield today to give our defence a little bit more protection. In the event though, Charles was needed at
centre back with Bednarek having picked up a knock playing for Poland in the
week. He took his place alongside new signing Taylor Harwood-Bellis which left
us with a midfield three of Downes, Smallbone and Adam Armstrong who was
wearing the captains armband for the second game running. Che Adams got a place upfront and Ryan Fraser
made his full debut.
From the kickoff we pass the ball back to KWP is in the centre of midfield and
eventually it goes back to Shea Charles who has rotated into Kyle’s place right
back. His clearance is blocked and Leicester pick up the ball, pass forward,
cross, open goal, Rat Bastard unmarked, 1-0, 21 seconds. What actual fucking fuck was
that? How can you go from kicking off to 1-0 down in 20 seconds?
Having already conceded a goal and done the same straight away against Sunderland last time out, Harwood-Bellis tries to mark his debut with a horrific attempt at a pass through the eye of a needle into midfield from the 6-yard line and absolute carnage ensues and we just about get away with that one. What the fuck is going on? You’ve shot yourself once, here’s a loaded gun – have another go. What are we doing?
What we are doing is trying to get back into it and we work an opening for Che Adams on the edge of the box and his shot for the far corner is turned away well by Hermanson. The Leicester keeper is at the centre of things soon after as he finds himself out of his goal after a ‘play out from the back’ fuck up and the ball breaks to Che who once again demonstrates his unerring talent for hitting the goalkeeper from every conceivable situation.
Playing out from the back has another fucking mare on 18 minutes as well have another go. Smallbone has the ball out on the right and fires it infield at KWP but it’s lose and bounces free to Dewsbury-Hall. One pass across to McAteer and he can’t really miss and it’s 2-0, courtesy of us giving the ball away twice in our back third. Fucking brilliant.
When we do go long, it’s usually down to Baz to find his man, which he does with reasonable amounts of success. His ball out to Fraser causes confusion in the Leicester defence and Doyle leaves it for Vestergaard who has the reaction spead of a slug, so Adams slides it through for Edozie, who neatly chips over Hermansen to make it 2-1.
Saints are generally on top for the next twenty minutes or so without producing much, in contrast to Leicester who look likely to score every time they get close to our goal. After a period of utter chaos in our area which we survive, you think that we can get to half time and regroup but oh no, of course not as Mavididi bundles past a piss-weak challenge from Edozie and finds Ndidi in the box and he sorts his feet out nicely to knock it round the sliding THB and past Baz to make it 3-1. Dog shit.
Half time and we’ve fucked it. All we had to do was manage the game and see it out for a couple of minutes and get to the break just the one behind, like any normal team would have done but oh no. Defensively I have never seen anything quite like that – I can’t even see what is supposed to be happening defensively and nothing has changed over the 45 minutes. I expected to see something sensible happen at half time, like Holgate brought on for Smallbone or Adam Armstrong and Charles moved to midfield but all we got was Edozie, who had been our best attacker, off and replaced with Sulemana.
Still, get the first goal of the second half and we might have a chance if we tighten things up and the first chance falls to Captain Armstrong as Manning’s cross is headed down by the giant in the air that is Ryan Fraser and Armstrong blasts it miles over from about ten yards. Has to score I’m afraid.
With Downes having got injured and been replaced with Alcaraz, Smallbone is now our defensive midfielder, which is a disaster waiting to happen and sure enough, Leicester stroll though our non-existent midfield and luckily, Mavididi turns down squaring the ball for the unmarked Rat Bastard and puts it wide himself as Baz comes out.
Sulemana has started the half reasonably out on the left, giving Justin the runaround but with little end product. After 15 minutes or so though, he loses the ball a couple of times and you can see the enthusiasm drain out of him. With all our players up following a set piece, he waves a lazy leg at the ball and his attempted pass goes straight to Mavididi and though he has 70 yards to go, it’s only Smallbone between him and Baz. He pisses past Smallbone’s lame attempt at a tackle and sprints away. It’s now a training drill where you are through on goal with no one chasing you and on he goes and scores easily. Embarrassing.
As the game peters out and the ground empties, Iheanacho should make it 5 but puts it over with just Baz to beat and then it’s over to Bobby Madley, who I haven’t mentioned yet. He doesn’t give Sulemana a free kick and then when Sulemana chases back and tries to tackle Justin, out comes the red card, I assume because Bobby thought it was retaliation. Absolute bullshit but it doesn’t matter for today and for all Sulemana’s contribution today, probably doesn’t matter even if he gets banned. A perfect end to a great day.
I am struggling for words at the end of that, so I’ll use last seasons ‘go to’ description and say that it was absolute fucking shit. We lost the game in the first half of course with a defensive set up as shambolic as I have ever seen in my 50 years of watching live football matches. In summary, Manning was left back, THB was at left centre back, Charles was in between right centre back and right back. KWP was in central midfield but not close enough to Downes to make any sort of defensive screen. Downes was playing where you would expect a defensive midfielder to be and Smallbone was absolutely fucking nowhere. If it hadn’t of been for Bazunu then we would’ve been five behind at half-time. I can only assume (and it is a guess) that it was supposed to be a back three out of possession but it’s impossible to tell because it was that shambolic.
It didn’t get any better in the second half, when we replaced the injured Downes with Alcaraz and basically deployed Smallbone as the defensive midfielder - only he wasn’t really, he was pressing in the Leicester half, as was Shea Charles who was going up and pressing on the halfway line leaving THB completely on his own at the back, given occasional help by Manning but mostly relying on Baz to keep the score down. We were so open throughout that game that you could honestly say that if we play like that, we’ll struggle win another game between now and the end of the season and we will be letting in at least three goals every game, even against the weaker sides.
The thing today is the Leicester weren’t even that good and didn’t have to be. All they had to be was vaguely organised and they didn’t have to work for any of their goals as we just made it easy for them. A complete and utter shambles from start to finish, on top of getting beat 5-0 and vowing to learn lessons and all that shit that managers say after a heavy defeat. I’m sorry, but going for a lot of over-complicated inverted-full-back bollocks like that does not show that he’s learning any lessons. Just play a fucking back four in traditional positions and have two midfielders as a defensive screen in front of them. Don’t fucking over-complicate it because our players are not good enough to do that and you can try and add complications when a team has mastered the basics.
There is a large section in the middle of the game either side of half-time where we showed that if we just set up with any sort of stable defensive set up then we could well have won this game. If we had the same system in place that we had at Sheffield Wednesday, when we were organised and disciplined then we may well have won this game but it looks to me like we were just trying to be too fucking clever today with players that weren’t capable of doing it. Ruben Selles did the same thing at the tail end of last season and it was ridiculous then and it’s ridiculous now.
Whilst most of the blame for this defeat lies with the management and the coaches, of course, individual players made some horrendous decisions and put in piss poor performances. I’m not having Will Smallbone as a regular starter. He is a classic flat track bully in that he looks great when you have 80% possession and the opposition midfield don’t close you down but as soon as there’s any sort of battle in there then he’s next to useless and he doesn’t contribute defensively at all because he’s not quick enough to get about the park and he can’t tackle. Basically, I would not play him unless it’s against teams who you expect to be in the bottom six.
Captain Adam Armstrong was fucking hopeless today. Occasionally he picked up the ball and darted into space and it looked like something was going to happen but it never did. The final ball or shot was always crap but like Smallbone, here is another player who has been elevated to almost undroppable status by the manager, similar to the way that Jack Stephens was when he was made captain.
Then we have Kamaldeen Sulemana, who everyone (including himself probably) assumed was gonna tear up this league if he got his head round it and actually got down to playing but we saw everything we needed to see of Kamaldeen today. To start with he looked sharp and interested and dangerous but then he fucked up and that led to the fourth goal and after that he completely disappeared, didn’t want the ball and then got himself sent off, harshly perhaps but that’s Bobby Madley for you.
The accusation that he can’t organise a defence has followed Russell Martin around his entire career and all he did today was added more fuel to that. Our defensive set up at our own corners involved basically leaving one player who can’t run or tackle - Smallbone, on his own on the halfway line. That’s suicidal. Mavididi running at him for the fourth goal was comical.
Some of the defensive shambles was of course on the players. One of the most amazing (in a bad way) bit of play was from THB. Having lost 5-0 to Sunderland last week, letting in two goals in the first five minutes and having conceded after less than a minute today - he then tried to thread a ridiculous ball in between to Leicester players from the edge of the 6-yard box. Regardless of philosophy, if you are a goal down due to a fuck up after one minute, you grow into the game for the next ten and make sure you don’t fuck up again.
Russell Martin talked about learning the lessons from the Sunderland game and applying them today. Over two weeks he totally failed to do that. We were playing the team that's likely to win the Championship and he sent us out with just one defensively minded midfielder and He now has four days before the next game, at home to a fairly strong Ipswich side. If we go out with that defensive set up against Ipswich - we will lose so for me, it has to be back to basics. There was one line from Russell Martin’s post match interview which I found interesting, when he said something along the lines of anyone who thought we would get to where we need to get to without pain, was a little bit naive. That’s all well and good mate but when you have two back-to-back hammerings, that is not going to wash with supporters and you have to remember that this is a season where it’s not okay for the club that you are managing to finish 13th. There will be a certain amount of tolerance and maybe if we’d lost these two games or a single goal then people would be more forgiving but getting annihilated twice running is really not a good look. Another jarring statement was that we went 'toe to toe' with Leicester - absolute bollocks that one.
KWP was an interesting choice for the player to do the post match interviews and he came out in defence of the manager and put the blame the players for not carrying out the defensive instructions. I assume he’s referring to himself as he played in an area in between right midfield and centre midfield and spend the whole game looking completely fucking lost.
All I can say in mitigation is that I hope that this was some sort of tactic that was brought in specifically for this game against Leicester. It clearly didn’t work of course but hopefully, it will be back to basics on Tuesday night. Please.
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