My first game of the season last night, few observations from me:
Livermore played well and I definitely think he suits the deeper role he played last night as opposed to the box to box role he was given away at Arsenal.
Krychowiak is a good player, strong and fairly quick with decent feet too. I don't think he is playing any more than a 6 or 7 out of 10 currently but I think you can see that he has another gear in him compared to our other central midfield options.
Rodriguez can play wide but needs to be able to cut inside and link with the front man or attacking midfielder depending on the system; the deep 4-3-3 we played last night with Rondon isolated isn't ideal for him as he is unable to link and get into dangerous positions. He certainly isn't a winger that will get to the byline and put the ball across like a Phillips or McLean might do.
I know it was an away game and that Leicester are good on the break but we still attack with one too few for my liking; we only ever seem allowed to commit 4 to an attack which invariably only gives us one or two options. There were times last night were Gibbs and Chadli linked up down the left and only Rondon and maybe Rodriguez were anywhere near them. Dawson, Barry and Krychowiak all would sit and at least one of them should be freed up to join the attack.
I'm not really a fan of the balance of the three central midfielders we had last night. I think when you play deep like we do and play this 4-3-3 formation (which played like a 4-1-4-1), then two of the three central midfielders need to be allowed (see paragraph above) and able, to join the attacks. I think only really Krychowiak and I guess Morrison have the capacity to do that, as decent as Barry is, i don't think he is suited to that role. I feel that Barry, Livermore and Yacob are all competing for the same holding midfielder spot, that's what they are all best at for me.
Finally, I don't and never have really liked Pulis as a manager although I know that he is a competent manager and appreciate that we have had managers that aren't all that competent. One of the key reasons why was highlighted in injury time with a free kick in their half. We could have loaded the box with McAuley, Hegazi, Evans, Dawson and still kept Gibbs, Livermore and Barry back in an attempt to win that game but Pulis showed no intention of doing so. It is overly-cautious and at times detrimental. I remember in that terrible week where we lost to Villa twice that in the league game, we got back into the game through Lescott from a corner at around the 60/70 minute mark. 5 minutes later we got another corner, had good momentum and the centre backs, including Lescott who scored 5mins earlier, were all kept back. We all know how that game ended and it is instances like that which annoy me about Pulis, along with our time wasting.