Haven't read any of this thread but thought I would add my thought. This was my first game of the season, I went with my (Leicester-supporting) father- and sister-in-law and my (carefully bi-partisan) wife.
I actually thought a lot of our players were fine. Not good, but fine. Tactically though, we were shambolic and that's all on the manager.
We started with a back three of a kid who's been here for about two training sessions, a midfielder and a very attacking full-back, and put KWP in midfield. I'm surprised we lasted as long as we did before Leicester scored.
We lose the ball from our kick off routine, Leicester press it efficiently and score, and then from the next kick off we do... exactly the same thing?
Bazunu has obviously been told to play out from the back but there has been no thought about what to do if the opposition is pressing our defenders, which lead to 5+ occasions of "look for a short pass, hesitate, hesitate, roll it out to near Vardy, panic and hoof it long to 5ft4 Fraser". Poor tactics from Martin.
We looked very confused across the pitch, players didn't know where they were supposed to be, where their teammates would be, and it looked like they didn't trust each other. At multiple times, we had KWP, Edozie and Smallbone all attacking on the right wing with nobody providing any kind of option for short passes or to receive in the middle of the pitch. Poor tactics from Martin.
Our pressing was half-arsed, Leicester also wanted to play it back to their keeper and play it out from the back, but unlike our opposition, we didn't know how to press. They would wait until Adams pressed, the wingers would press wide, leaving a totally clear midfield for the keeper to play a nice simple pass to the halfway line. Either press properly or don't press at all. Poor tactics. From a Leicester free kick, we had six players pushing up around the penalty area, then an absolute gulf of empty space, then our back four. In fairness this actually worked most of the time, forced Leicester to go long and Charles was genuinely brilliant and running up into midfield and winning the headers ahead of the Leicester player. I suspect other teams will work out how to play against this very quickly though.
Midfield is our biggest weakness. Adam Armstrong, particularly in the first half, put in a good performance as a #8 and was literally the only player willing to run forward with the ball with any urgency. End product was still lacking though and I still don't know where his best position is, because he doesn't do anything defensively. Will Smallbone is completely pointless, does nothing, contributes nothing. Having him as the one man back from corners was ridiculous. Equally, I don't see the point of Downes, he may as well have not been there for most of the game (and did a very good impression of this every time Leicester attacked). Smallbone and Downes both have this amazing ability to watch balls be passed around them with no understanding of or care for where a pass might be going. Training cones would have been more useful.
Ryan Manning is a very average left-back, and the sooner Martin realises this, the better. He's not very quick, he's poor positionally, isn't very good at crossing, and doesn't get back into position quickly enough. So many of Leicester's attacks came down our left-hand side when Manning was somewhere else. I have zero idea why he was taking all our corners from the right - he's not very good at them and then when we lose the ball, he's nowhere near where he needs to be. He took one corner where all he did was roll it to Edozie! Clearly Martin wants in-swingers but sometimes you have to work with what you have, and an out-swinger from the right is going to be much less damaging than having our left-back take them.
The subs were largely fine, we had a short period where we looked quite good with Alcaraz, Sulemana, Armstrong and Adams playing nicely, with Fraser sort of shunted out to the right where he's not very effective. Aribo was dreadful though, he may as well not have a choc-ice instead of a right foot and the defenders know it.
I really hope Martin swallows his pride and learns some lessons from this. We need two centre backs at centre back. Charles must start at #6. KWP is not a midfielder. Adam Armstrong can run off the shoulder but is otherwise useless as a striker. Manning should not be taking corners (and ideally would be benched but there's not much competition there). Smallbone and Downes are the same player and both offer very little.
Ipswich next - likely to be another humbling experience.
