Anyway, here we go around the horn. We will focus on the positives, like:

• Leicester’s fabulous comeback win against Leeds in the Carling Cup. A glorious 2-1 win indeed.
• Even with Steve Howard’s late penalty, manager Sousa admits that we need to add the finishing touch to our repertoire. We need to finish our chances.
• We struggle? We go after players. KING POWER.
• Patience is a virtue, says Sousa.
• Hobbs says we shall not panic. Thus I won’t.

Tea-time updates will be posted at that time.

Expect a nervy match and hopefully we grind out another 1-0 result.

I was able to recruit Josh M. (via Twitter, that’s right, follow me @allenjkha and @filbertway and him @josh_mccarthy) in Leicester to provide a personal recap of match thoughts. Like last time, some of it will be about the match, some will be about the atmosphere at Filbert Way (I’m clever!). If you have any questions for Josh, just list them in the comments section.

If you’re interested in contributing your match thoughts for future matches on the blog, email me at allen[at]filbertway.com. Thanks! His comments below the jump.

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1) Anything you want to vent? General thoughts you have about the match or the squad?

Not really, I thought we played really positive football today. Whilst you might complain that we perhaps should have converted more of the chances, at least we looked dangerous going forward which sets us up for the season. I’ve always been dubious of whether passing style can work in the Championship, but I thought today’s display leaves room for optimism.

2) What were you hoping for pre-match? Facing a pre-season favourite to win league, and Stachan, did that matter to you?

I don’t think it matters who we play at home to be honest, this league is so open that anyone can beat anyone. If Leicester have hopes of promotion or playoffs again then we shouldn’t fear anyone. I’d hoped pre match we’d get at least a draw.

[After thinking about it] post-match, I think we were unlucky to not get all 3 points. For [being league] favourites, I thought Boro looked very poor, especially given the investment strachen has made into the team. It gives an indication of how much better the Championship is than the SPL when we kept Kris Boyd quiet all afternoon, a player who was much hyped having scored over 100 goals in something like 137 appearances for Rangers.

3) How were the fans (yeah dumb question)? We seemed very receptive to the positive football. Reception of the new owners?

It was a really positive atmosphere, the fans seem to have really taken to Sousa already with some real enthusiasm to the passing style we’re adopting. Unfortunately I missed the introduction of the new owners.

Ed. Note: From the TV and radio commentary, the reception looked really rousing, I’ll tell my thoughts in another post soon.

4) Was that goal offsides in your opinion? Thoughts on the referees? Other related thoughts?

I was pretty unconvinced that the goal was offside, and having seen the reply it looks a poor decision. The referee had a fairly poor performance overall, missing a few obvious decisions and not really being consistent with the decisions that were made.

5) Fair result? Anything non-score related you’d wish for? Any Leicester player impress you?

I’m biased but I do think we deserved the win today, just on effort and the chances we created.

Player-wise, DJ Campbell played well and worked really hard which was a good sign, and Jack Hobbs is improving week by week. In terms of new players, Lamey made a good cameo in the last ten minutes, and after a shakey first 25 Moreno looked like a really assured defender who could be a nice asset for Sousa. His heading leaves a bit to be desired though.

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Like last week, I also happen to agree with the gist of Josh’s comments. Both Lamey and Moreno were shaky in the beginning, but improved and gained confidence over time. Our squad is definitely promising.

Nothing to show for it though, it’s like me playing FIFA or Pro Evo.

Recap and some analysis (and statistics) tonight.


Sousa’s thinking the exact same thing.

Ed. Note: This has been edited to clarify the figures represented in this blog post. Oh… and misspellings.

Leicester City is a club with a prestigious and spoiled goalkeeping history– we’ve been blessed watching the likes of internationals Kasey Keller and Tim Flowers command between the posts during our League Cup successes; Mark Wallington for a club record 331 consecutive appearances in the late 1970s; Peter Shilton and his world-class play before Wallington; and the legendary Gordon Banks, who was the world’s best goalkeeper at the time, before Shilton.

Unfortunately, our goalkeepers in this past decade haven’t been able to fill the shoes of those past legends. The likes of Rab Douglas and Paul Henderson were extremely underwhelming and in retrospect played a large role in our inability to get over the promotion hump. In fact, the lack of a decent keeper (for the second half of the season) was certainly a major cause behind our relegation to League One in the 2007-2008 disaster. (Blame Keane all you want, please do.)

Stoke City happened to be the beneficiary of our legendary goalkeeping depth in the late 1960s and 1970s. When Peter Shilton made it clear to the club management that first-team appearances were a condition to him signing a professional contract, Banks had to go and found a new home at Stoke. Somewhat similarly speaking, Leicester City was the beneficiary of such goalkeeping depth with the free agent signing of Chris Weale from Bristol City. Although Weale was not a starter at Bristol City like Banks was with us, both footballers were compelled to leave their clubs for first-team football. Weale was never really primed to leapfrog the superb Adriano Basso (ironic in retrospect) and found an opportunity with the Foxes.

He made the most of it.

If you believe in the American sports mantra of “defence wins championships”, then Weale has certainly improved our chances of winning the Championship– his superb play between the posts last season almost guided us up to the Premier League, in fact. Although Weale will never be world-class like some our previous shot-blockers were in their respective careers, he has provided us with an invaluable amount of stability at an important position.

What makes Weale so important to the squad though? How do we separate his contributions from the work of the defence in front of him? How talented is Weale, and what qualities make him good? Is he a point of concern if we wanted to upgrade the squad, if we were to be promoted?

I’ll look at this after the jump.

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Before I get to my analysis, I want to disclose my philosophy on judging players and give a preview to my analytical methodology. As an American Foxile and avid baseball fan, I’ve witnessed the rise of sabermetrics– i.e. deep statistical analysis of baseball through objective evidence– as a mainstream form of player rating and prognostication to concurrent excitement and chagrin. I’ve always observed and appreciated the game through its intricacies, and my objective in anything I present you will be to blend player trends highlighted by statistics and explain them to you through the obvious and the not-so-obvious.

My baseball analogue to my ideal content presentation here would lie in the case of Tampa Bay Rays first baseman Carlos Pena. Without diving too heavy into the statistics (the AVG/OBP/OPS –> ISO, etc.), it’s apparent that Pena really only excels in hitting for power– home runs. A lot of these trends can be explained through the mechanics of his swing and body positioning, in my opinion. From observation live and through TV, I notice that he’s leaning a bit, has frozen hips, and doesn’t transfer weight between his back plant foot and front foot; all of this combined in one swing causes him to have to recognize pitches quicker to connect, which explains his stats for the most part.

Even though soccer statistics are grossly underdeveloped and poorly correlative (especially for goalkeepers), it’s my goal to blend the two approaches as well as I can to come up with the best player profile for you. I’ve always been skeptical of statistics in sport– especially soccer– because of the scouts I have learned from, but I appreciate what they reveal. These stats may not be predictive, but I do somewhat believe that past performance affects or is indicative of future results. Hopefully the below analysis does the trick in analyzing Weale.

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All of this statistics and scouting ranting/mumbo jumbo aside, Chris Weale is a good keeper in any perspective. Weale has very good reflexes, has good command of his penalty area, and distributes well. Besides that, he’s a solid keeper all-around. He leaves something to be desired in terms of his ability to hoof the ball accurately, but our strikers don’t suit that style anyway.

Weale is the type of keeper that would give a club a good amount of confidence– he never really presented himself to me as particular streaky, and he didn’t have very many bad games last season. Considering we had a young pairing of centre backs (albeit a quite talented pair), we didn’t concede very many goals. The only terrible matches he had that I recall from last year were the Forrest debacle, the Cardiff FA Cup match, the West Brom near the end of the campaign, and the Derby howler; this is a pretty good testament to his consistency since we played a lot of matches last season.

My opinions on Weale:

• Scouting: On a 0-200 scale (similar to the Football Manager scale), I figure Weale rates in the 120-135 range. This probably puts him in the upper percentile of goalkeepers in the Championship, and makes him a serviceable keeper in the Premiership. (Anything above 135 is serviceable for the Premiership.)
• His aerial ability, communication and organization, and throwing distribution are strengths. (140+)
• I don’t think he has any particular weaknesses (below 100-110) besides a lack of freakish talent or savvy (like an elite keeper would normally have), although I have noticed that Weale’s command of his area leads to some unnecessary agression and rush and punch clearances.

Anyway, nothing about him makes me view Weale as really good keeper. But concurrently, he has developed into a very solid player with very few weaknesses. He is a good team player that has spurned interest from Premiership clubs because he wants to get playing time with us, and I respect that. He’s a professional and from my scouting and fan perspective is a solid rock on our squad.

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With my scouting thoughts considered, do the statistics support my positive (and near-glowing) views? I crunched all of the fixtures Weale played in in the 2009/2010 season and produced this:

Fig. 1: Chris Weale’s +/- Polygon, i.e. his “contributions” while he’s on the pitch. The black circle is a baseline comparison that is calculated by double the average goal differential per game.

If you’re familiar with the player attribute polygon from FM, you might have an idea of what this graph is trying to portray. I’m essentially trying to capture Weale’s net effect on the team through the figure above. The light blue line measures the amount of goals Leicester scored while he was on the pitch against a particular club, while the yellow line measures the amount of goals Leicester conceded while he was on the pitch against a particular club. The dark blue line measures the difference between the goals allowed and conceded against each team, much like a +/- figure in hockey. The black circle is the constant league average +/-.

The figure above is quite flattering to Weale. From the graph, we can glean that Weale had a positive +/- for most of his appearances and an positive +/- for the season (+14). But how do we judge this number?

Because we can assume that a goalkeeper will rarely score, Weale’s +/- could be inflated because of a prolific attack. Weale could have been nothing more than an average player boosted by an amazing attack or stellar defense.

The type of analysis I’m trying to perform is very tricky and dangerous, because I’m trying to crunch compiled data and conclude things about different parts of the team without knowing how those stats were actually achieved. Assigning responsibility or blame without really knowing how it happened (working top-down) is dangerous stuff, but it’s worth a shot and can reveal some interesting facts.

So, how do we weigh Weale’s contribution in preventing goals? My best guess (for now, time permitting) would be to compare to Weale’s goals conceded to the expected amount a team is supposed to concede. While this analysis would still be more reflective of team defence compared to Weale’s individual goal-preventing ability, it’s the best we can do with the stats available. Furthermore, a deeper statistical look into defenders could reveal something different from this analysis. Comparative analysis could then differentiate the defenders’ contributions from Weale’s contributions.

Going off the intellectual ideas of my friend Graham MacAree (who’s absolutely brilliant; runs a Chelsea blog and is a respected baseball statistics analyst), I am going to calculate the expected amount of goals we are supposed to concede by taking the goals scored (minus the matches against us, so the total from 44 Championship matches) and divide it by 44. From there, we can compare it against the amount of goals Weale conceded in the polygon.

First, the calculations used to come up with the constants involved:

Fig. 2a: Calculations of league averages. “Avg GS” has to be doubled to get the expected goals scored against Leicester.

What’s going on here:

• We want to find how how many goals we expect to give up against a particular team (purple polygon in Fig. 2b). To do this, we take the total goals scored (GS) for a team, subtract it by the goals scored by us (-LCFC; we do this to avoid any bias by our team), and divide it by 44 (total matches played against everyone but us) to get the average amount of goals scored per game by that team. We then multiply this number AVG GS by two so we can compare the amount of goals Weale conceded versus this average/expected amount.
• We can also compare Weale to the league average (blue circle in Fig. 2b). We’re essentially comparing Weale’s goals conceded polygon to a static value (a circle on the parametric graph, that blue circle). To do that, we’re essentially finding the league average for goals scored per game (averaging the Avg GS column) and multiplying times two again.

Note: Please ignore the Macclesfield reference in here– for some reason my data kept on pulling in Macclesfield even though I didn’t want it to. This graph only references Championship fixtures and statistics. The Macclesfield data points should be zero anyway.

Now, the polygon:

Fig. 2b: Chris Weale’s Goals Conceded (and +/-) Polygon, i.e. his expected “contribution” versus his actual contribution.

Notice that most of Weale’s data points are inside the purple and blue enclosures. That indicates that the team defense (and hopefully Weale) is better than expected against the team and against the league averages for goals scored. The statistics thus indicate that Weale is one of the better goalkeepers in the division, a lack of comparisons notwithstanding.

These statistical comparisons are very flawed since they essentially use the team’s overall defensive ability to judge a player, but it’s the best I can do with the statistics available. If anything, though, the analysis above reveals that Weale– the leader of our squad’s defence– has been a positive and talented addition to our squad. We’re lucky we found a quality keeper on a free transfer.

Ed Note.: Foxesblogger, who’s the resident Foxes expert here on the net, has some additional stats that I can look at in the future. Maybe I can improve this post at a later time, thanks for reading!

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P.S. Conrad Logan is fairly decent, haha. Nothing much to say about the long-tenured Academy product.

P.S. 2 Follow @allenjkha and @filbertway on Twitter!

A Thai consortium led by Aiyawatt Raksri­aksorn has bought a majority of Leicester City F.C., and Milan Man­daric will remain as chairman of the club., The new owners will also be taking on the clubs’ debt of £26m– exact ownership of the club will be revealed in the following days per compliance of Football League disclosure guidelines. The Leicester City owner is known for being the owner of Asian duty-free shop King Power Group, also the Foxes’ shirt sponsor for the new three seasons.

This is definitely ironic for former manager Nigel Pearson, considering he left the club because of finances. Patience will be a virtue here.

Link here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h96i-flVl-Zh-NQeBOoI1XoTi2tg.

More here and here.

Lucky for me, however, I’ve recruited a friend– Dave M.– in Leicester to provide a personal recap of match thoughts. Some of it will be about the match, some will be about the atmosphere at Filbert Way (I’m clever!). If you have any questions for Dave, just list them in the comments section.

If you’re interested in contributing your match thoughts for future matches on the blog, email me at allen[at]filbertway.com. Thanks! His comments below the jump.

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On our style of football:

Anybody who thinks that life is going to be boring with Paulo Sousa in charge is probably an idiot or [out of it].

On pre-match thoughts:

On my way to the game, I thought, “[hey it's] Macclesfield, got to score at least 5 past them.” Little did I know what was about to happen at the Walkers… James F. (one of his friends) said that Pete C. (another friend) thinks [Macclesfield] will score first, but [I thought] not a chance; we will crush them, no problem.

Where he was at (we’re all friends here):

Met up with 3 friends outside the ticket office and [sat in] Row Z in the Upton steel stand. Bloody hell I might need oxygen to get up that high.

The atmosphere and thoughts during the match:

The away supporters to my left were in a joyest mood, all 113 of them– they must have come on 2 mini buses. I settled down to what I thought would be a easy game for the boys in blue. With the new addition to our team, Moreno, in the starting line up at center back, things look good.

The first sign of an really exciting night came after 15 mins, Macclesfield’s first corner, over it came– a header– one nil down. I was thinking, “here we go again, this could be a long night.” Paulo was partroling the technical area, pointing & trying to sort out our defence– [hectic, to say the least].

The one bright thing about the first half was Robbie Nielson– what’s got into him this season? Attacking down the wing, putting dangerous balls into the box, and to top it all his first goal for the club.

N’Gusessan can be so frustrating at times, brillant in a spilt second, then totally rubbish the next. Howard ran himself into the ground. Good job it didn’t go into extra time, [Stevie] wouldn’t have made 10 mins never mind 30.

You know the rest: Fryatt’s 2 goals, Wellens glorist strike. Hobbs taking a ball from Morrison that he should never have sent to him, that led to an exciting finish.

Post match thoughts:

To be fair to the lads, they showed good one touch football at times, cut though the midfield with no problems. Wellens fighting for every ball, Fryatt showing at last the form that made him top scorer last season, Howard always there to lay off the ball to oncoming players, and Oakley his usual self good at times before giving the ball away in midfield.

My man of the match… Robbie Nielsen. He worked hard, supported the front two.
Villian…well [Danny] N’Gussean. he had the chance to score a couple of times– his bullet header in the first half was cleared off the line.

Overall a good performance. We should have scored at least 10, but to be fair to Macclesfield should have scored at least 6.

Summing up, life at the Walkers this season is going to be very interesting, Defensive? Not a chance! Goals? Yes there will be many; but [for whom] scores them, we will soon see. Sousa has got to sort out the defence [though], sooner or later City will get hammered by a half decent team. Let’s hope not. Boring Sousa… no way…

I’d have to agree with all of those thoughts for the most part. Disappointing that the attendance at the match was just a shade over 6.000, but that’s how the League Cup is.

And again, if you’re interested in contributing to this site, I’m definitely open for guest views. Email me at allen[at]filbertway.com or hit me up on Twitter @filbertway. Thanks for reading y’all.

Anyway, here’s our trip around the horn featuring your daily dose of Leicester links. This edition features plenty of recaps of yesterday’s victory (links will be added a bit after noon BST, when it’s morning state-side and I can read the morning’s news from England). I’ll post my analysis tomorrow.

Thoughts from other people about our victory against Macclesfield:

• The BBC apparently isn’t very good with stats– we had more than zero corners.
• At least our club has it right. Good recap if you’re looking for one. (I’ll spare you reading my potential recap for this one.)
• I generally like Sky Sports and their interactive coverage. So I pull up by bookmark and take a look at the player ratings, only for them to be blank. User-tallied player ratings are up, but I don’t think Paullie Gallagher exactly deserves a 9.5.
• You can always trust FoxesTalk to have a lively discussion about things though. Go ahead and take a look, we/they won’t bite!

We’re still talking about that Palace result though…

• At least columnist Ben Jacobs is, just grumbling about the match of course. Worth a read.
• And since our club is so bad…, we could use a few signings. The Daily Mail says the manager over at Hull will beat us to signing Koren. I find that quite silly for Koren– he’d surely enjoy our attacking-style of football more, but Hull is “more prestigious” and has better um, you should just click the link (FoxesTalk).
• P.S. As an American, I would definitely love to see Jay DeMerit here. Comments are always made about our young centerbacks not feeling comfortable playing on the left-centre, and I’m pretty sure DeMerit could cover there. Our defense is already strong in numbers (and will be boosted when Tunchev comes back from injury), but adding a quality piece like DeMerit for free will only strengthen our squad.

And just some random thoughts here:

• FoxBlogger has a stellar post about Leicester and the League Cup. As much as I love the club, I’ll never have as much of an understanding of the club as someone who’s following the club as long as I have been alive. Considering the attendance for the home match against Macclesfield was just a shade over 6.000, perhaps we have to think about changing our perspective on these “less-important” matches. I see similarities between this American football preseason matches (i.e. what we call friendlies), and I’ll articulate on those thoughts later.
• Oh, and another blog worth reading: We Ain’t Got No History. Graham Macaree, a well-renowned baseball statistics (i.e. sabermetrics) analyst and seeming know-it-all, just launched a Chelsea blog that is pretty comprehensive about sport. Definitely worth a look!

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Hope you enjoy this compilation, and please feel free to critique and provide suggestions for other Leicester-related news sources. Look for updates in the afternoon (BST).

• Robbie Neilsen’s confidence must be through the roof. He looks confident going forward and is making a case to start every week. Some gaps on defense, but Neilsen’s been generally very solid.
• Moreno also looks very composed and confident. Sad he got off with an injury near the end of the match.
• MATTY FRYATT! How about that brace? Well done Matty.
• Stevie Howard is arguably our best player so far this season. I don’t know if he starts, but he definitely has to feature in every match somehow. His vision and passes have unlocked defenses so far this season.
• Good day of results. We win and all of the teams we hate lose.
• Haha, I like how the post-match show is trying to give a rational response to wanting O’Neill back. Of course we want MON back.
• I also heard a bit about bringing Jay DeMerit back. That’s very interesting, he might be the experienced center back Hobbs needs (as described on the post-match show, not necessarily my thoughts). As an American, I would love to see DeMerit at my favourite club.

More to follow, I’ll have detailed analysis of the match tomorrow morning (BST, that means later tonight for me).