Fan unrest and questionable decisions: Where does Cooper go from here?
No wins in the league and following two very poor performances, fans are asking questions and some want Steve Cooper out. The bookies have him favourite to be sacked and the pressure is mounting, fairly or not. Cooper is saying all the right things but where do we go from here?
Before the Everton game, Steve Cooper doubled down on his criticism of VAR and the decision in the Crystal Palace game. It was straight from the Mourinho, or any politician's, handbook for distraction and diversion. It kept the pressure, pre-match anyway, off the players and made his comments the big talking point.
Sadly for Cooper, post Everton, in the run-in to Walsall and in the aftermath, all the focus has been about his job. Not all of us would have run across a League Two pitch to give him our opinion, but even the more optimistic and measured fans have a few concerns.
This isn’t another pile-on for Cooper out, not yet anyway, but it’s getting to the point that where patience remains, it's running thin. We need to see what Cooper and the players keep talking about put into practice.
A bad game to need a result
Facing up to Arsenal away as a Leicester fan is basically marking it down as an automatic loss. Expect nothing and likely get nothing. If you're going to make the trip, you know what we're up against. COVID cheated so many of us the chance to see us beat Arsenal away.
Not the ideal game then to be having the ‘we need a win’ conversation. It should be a free hit against title hopefuls. No pressure to win but pressure to right some wrongs and to give us a performance worthy of a Premier League team.
There has to be some sort of reaction on the pitch or it's going to be a nightmare if we start or show any of the same weaknesses as against Everton or Walsall.
The last time we went to the Emirates, it was a game that set off alarm bells and should have suggested Rodgers wasn't long for Leicester. The result was one thing, the manner we surrendered it in another. It feels ominous to be having similar doubts around the same time, two years on.
Glancing back at the match report from that game and it's grim reading. Questions about what our identity is? Check, we definitely haven't settled into one under Cooper. Fans, players and the manager on different pages? Check. A sense that things are on a knife edge of falling apart? Based on Tuesday, check. The only difference is in how Cooper answers questions. Mostly, let's come back to that point.
Like that season, from the outside a lot of people are probably wondering what exactly are we complaining about? Ok, we haven't won but a neutral may argue that having a couple of points on the board, dodging a deduction for this year and the fact we aren't rooted to the bottom of the table yet makes all this seem a bit premature, no?
It's hard to explain to a non Leicester fan that it's more a feeling right now and a fear it could get worse pretty quickly. Within the fan base, it's divided as ever on Cooper in or out and our squad quality.
The concerns are multifaceted. We could go back to the transfer approach, who we brought in, who we couldn’t offload. The question of identity, of philosophy and of the best eleven. It all adds to the question, what are we doing?
We haven't settled into any kind of recognisable identity under Cooper (he maybe plays for the underdog vibe but Everton/Walsall showed when we're not, we're lost) and there's no clear plan.
Cooper hasn't been able to wrangle results. Where we have worked hard and got a foothold in games, like the second halves against Tottenham and Aston Villa, we had to overcome already being behind.
Crystal Palace felt the typical Leicester, throw it away game. And worryingly, the performances haven't improved. If anything, they've gone backwards on the evidence of the last week. It's a bit of a paint by number approach right now and we just need to string together a convincing 90 minutes.
The nice guy
Cooper generally speaks well. It sounds realistic and respectful. However, saying things like this have a flashback element…
“Everything in our game has to be perfect, even the belief”
Said in his best Brendan Rodgers voice. That memory and what happened two years back will be plaguing all fans and driving a number of concerns.
At the point of Enzo Maresca doing a runner, everybody was looking at Leicester like the radioactive waste in the corner. Even with the right gear, why risk it? Our pulling power for a replacement was undoubtedly impacted by the financial woes and the possible points deduction.
Would Steve Cooper have been the number one candidate had we already won our legal duel with the Premier League? It's pure speculation but it seems less likely. That doesn't mean it's easy for the club to just pull the plug on him and as we saw with Rodgers, the board won't make decisions like that on a whim.
To Cooper’s credit, he’s avoiding the pitfall Enzo fell into. The reaction during games seemed to wind Enzo up and his post match comments in turn pushed fan buttons. Cooper on the other hand doesn’t snipe, despite the heavy criticism.
When asked about the chanting at Walsall and being confronted he gave a near perfect answer. It’s clear he respects opinions, and won’t openly critique fans. We were crying out for some of the honesty he offers in the past.
He's a nice guy, maybe not a flashy manager but loyal. Leicester fans don't have a problem with the man himself. However, none of these personality traits, or even how he conducts himself in interviews, count for much in modern football.
If perception is reality, it's only on performances, results and whether you can keep the King Power cheering for the team, instead of focusing on the manager. Judging him so far, and particularly in the last two games, it's worrying. It doesn’t help with rumours of unrest in the dressing room that have now been reported twice in separate places.
Realistically, a lot of fans would agree that whoever got the job, or had Enzo stayed, this season was going to be tough. There was always going to be a need to be pragmatic and in the few chances you get to win, being ruthless and taking them.
Where the nice tag works against Cooper is that we haven't done this yet. It's not in losing to Villa where people draw the line but in throwing away potential points at Fulham and Crystal Palace, and not taking advantage of a dismal Everton at home. Being nice doesn’t pay off if you don’t back it up with some wins.
The Red Lines
While the complaint has been levelled, this has nothing to do with his past at Nottingham Forest. Most Leicester fans aren’t actually bothered about that and the ones who are made their minds up back in June. This is about the unavoidable issues Cooper has to visibly address.
Like many modern day managers, there are plenty of things out of Cooper’s hands, but two of the three burning red lines driving the fans concerns are very much within his control. They’re basic expectations any fan would have with whoever is in charge, and to keep getting them wrong is becoming unforgivable.
Pick your best players
Pre-match conversations could just be recorded to save us all the time of repeatedly asking why Ricardo Pereira still isn’t getting any minutes and why we can’t start Stephy Mavididi and Abdul Fatawu together.
Or, do we need three defensive midfielders on the pitch at all times in every game? Perhaps Cooper feels he is naming his best team, but given the results and the way we’ve opened games, fans are right to doubt this.
The beginning of the end for Brendan Rodgers was that, on paper, he was picking the best squad. What he couldn't seem to acknowledge, or admit, was that a lot of those players were not performing to the required levels or were already scrolling the football equivalent of LinkedIn for their next opportunities.
His stubbornness to roll the dice and drop these players, or better, put some academy players into the mix who would have more than made up for any naivety with effort, which is the least the fans desired.
Cooper arguably doesn't seem to know either how to get the best players into the starting eleven, or just doesn't fancy them. He's tinkered a little bit with his starting lineups, presumably seeking some kind of perfect balance and with an eye on our opponents.
It's stifled us so far and too often, the decisions made and incomplete passes don't suggest the work is going in during training. On the evidence, players are trying but they’re not being given the best opportunities to succeed.
Substitutions
A side effect of not knowing his best eleven is how slow to make substitutions Cooper has been and how often they don't feel the right person at the right time.
The Conor Coady substitution will haunt us for a while, but in games where we were struggling to impose control or attack, we've been left waiting until the dying moments of the game to get a live wire like Fatawu on.
At Walsall, if ever a game needed a change at half time, it was that one and it took until the 69th minute to swap out Édouard for Jordan Ayew. To his credit, Ayew contributed more than our loanee in half the time but what Cooper needed was a live wire, something to shake up the dull, lacklustre play.
Is there an element of being too cautious? He's spoken about having a balance in his team. Likely why Ayew is preferred to put younger, more unpredictable options. Caution saw too many defensive players come into the mix at Palace and it didn't work for us.
The earliest substitute this season was against Everton, El Khannouss, who'd struggled, replaced by Buonanotte in the 53rd minute. You could have pulled the trigger there at half time too. Most other subs have been around the 65 to 70 minutes mark at best.
Premier League record
Though he's not in total control of this, it’s been glossed over by a lot of the Forest fans leaping to say how ungrateful and wrong Leicester fans are about Cooper. His record of winless games, now up to 19, in the Premier League extends past this run with Leicester.
However you analyse that, it doesn't look good. It doesn't suggest Cooper is the right man.
How the Leicester board look at this will be kept from the fans of course. We don't know what happened in the inquest following relegation. Presumably they concluded they waited too long with Rodgers to replace him, and that you can't just throw in an average coach to replace him and hope they can do something in an interim capacity.
We can't afford to do the same thing with Cooper. No fan wants to be relegated but a huge portion of why we are more sensitive to it is what awaits us if we're relegated. The EFL are just biding their time to throw another legal case at us, there'll be more point deductions chat and we'll likely need to sell some of our best players.
There are two more games before the October international break, two chances for Cooper to put his fighting talk into on pitch results, or it'll be a long couple of weeks of speculation and cries to the board to do something.
Perhaps the level of reaction to Cooper feels premature, we’re only five games in, but the questions and concerns are valid. The result at Arsenal isn’t likely to do much to help Cooper amongst the fanbase, the main judgement will come next week with Bournemouth coming to the King Power.
