Chapter 11 Offensive Football and Defensive Counterattacks
Arsenal fans at Highbury Stadium were silent when Leighton Bynes blasted the ball into the net, while a small number of Derby County fans and the neutral crowd who came there gave a huge cheer.
In the cheers, Leighton Baines knelt on the ground and hugged his forehead excitedly, and shouted excitedly, everyone could see his excitement.
Listening to the cheers from the fans in the stands, Leighton Bynes suddenly felt that the choice to come to Derby County last season was extremely correct. There is a head coach who trusts him and a group of trustworthy teammates. Defender, he was able to score against Arsenal, it was almost a dream.
Goal at Highbury Stadium! How many players can do it?
Now I am one of them.
He performed well last season, but that was the League One after all, and now it's completely different in the Premier League. Maybe tomorrow, there will be a lot of media reporting on him, right? What will they say? Fans will also be very satisfied with their performance, right? If he can continue to perform like this, maybe the England national team will call him soon... At this moment, countless thoughts flashed in Bynes' mind, the only thing he is very sure about is that now In front of him is a very bright road, all he needs to do is try his best to train and play.
The teammates were all around Baines, they just celebrated the goal together, and they are still very excited.
Van der Vaart looked at this group of teammates. He was not familiar with most of them, and some players even had incomplete names, but it didn't matter. After this game, he found that he was familiar with many people on the team.
At the same time, he also thinks of the game, his opponent Arsenal, and the current 2-0.
The only thing he is sure of right now is. The team's young head coach didn't lie to himself. This is really a vibrant team. Although it's just a newly-promoted team, it can play like this in the first game against Arsenal. He has more confidence in the strength of the team.
At the same time, he is also somewhat envious of Bynes and Ivan Crewe.
These two players are unknown on the team. But they had a league goal, and it was a goal against Arsenal, and as a starting striker, he has not scored a goal so far, and now he is suddenly eager to score.
For a striker, nothing is more convincing than a goal.
......
Wan Sheng stood on the sidelines and was very excited.
Match against Arsenal at Highbury Stadium. The score is 2:0. Even though he had confidence in the team before the game, he was still excited when he saw the score.
He suppressed his beating heart.
As a manager, he knew he had to stay calm, not to vent like the players, not to just get excited like everyone else, he needed to keep his head though, after a two-goal lead. What the team needs to do is hold on and drag the score to halftime. This is the safest.
So he called the captain Marcus and told him to tell the others to pay attention to the defense.
Although the offense is also very advantageous, Arsenal must really want to get back a goal before the end of the first half. They have a two goal advantage. It is very worthwhile to fight against them, so solid defense is the most important thing. .
Soon Marcus informed everyone on the team.
Everyone recovered from the joy of scoring, and hurriedly contracted the formation, posing as if they were guarding the goal.
......
Arsenal did want to get a goal back, two goals behind at half-time, and a goal behind is not the same concept, every Arsenal player knows they need to score, so after the game restarted, they attacked very hard .
Meanwhile, Derby County have shrunk their formation.
After shrinking the formation, Derby County's half-time defense became very dense, so it was not easy for Arsenal to find space and opportunities.
Arsenal coaching bench.
Wenger looked at the situation on the field and suddenly frowned. He was not frowning because the score was behind, but he found something strange... It seems that after Derby County contracted its formation and started to defend, tactics, formation Still no change?
This is a very strange place.
Normally, shrinking the formation to defend is completely different from offensive football. In offensive football, some players in the frontcourt don't even need to participate in the defense, but after shrinking the formation, the defense is actually a bit messy. Players in the frontcourt will retreat to their own half and run constantly at the front of the penalty area. Their movements have no regularity at all. It is just a rush to say it. The same is true for the team, which is how Arsenal are when they are all back in defense.
Derby County seems to be a little different.
But what is different, Wenger can't be sure for a while. After all, there is not much time left. After a few minutes of competition and two minutes of stoppage time, the referee blew the whistle for the end of the first half of the game. The team hurried back to the locker room.
Wenger was still thinking about this on his way back to the dressing room.
But he quickly shook his head and stopped thinking about it. He knew that the most important thing was to restore the morale of the team and continue to work hard in the second half.
......
The visiting team's locker room at Highbury Stadium.
Derby County players were all excited, some of them believed before the game that the team could beat Arsenal, but they never thought that the team could lead by two goals in the first half, and the process seemed to be easy.
Wan Sheng looked at everyone with a smile on his face.
This first half went a little too smoothly, but he knew the reason. First, the team's tactics were unexpected. After adding technical skills to the original tactics, after a month of training, coupled with his various coaching skills, the actual The team is not much worse than Arsenal. Another very important point is that for a long time at the beginning, Arsenal did not find the state at all. As a result, the team found the opportunity to score first, and then scored the first goal. two balls.
A two-goal advantage, which is good news, is even enough to guarantee the team's victory.
Wan Sheng raised his arms, signaling everyone to be quiet.
The players also stopped talking, concentrated their attention, and waited for Wan Sheng to speak. Just this simple action and reaction showed Wan Sheng's current control over the team. Everyone will follow his orders, he is the biggest leader of the team.
After the locker room was quiet, Wan Sheng said, "Everyone performed very well in the first half, everyone is very good!"
"If I were a reporter. I would have asked. Derby County are two goals ahead, how do you guys feel?"
Hearing Wan Sheng's joking words, everyone laughed out loud--
"very good!"
"This is fantastic! We are ahead of Arsenal!"
"Two balls! I can't even imagine it!"
"Ivan, Leiden! Our hero, haha!"
"..."
The locker room was a mess, Wan Sheng raised his hand again to signal everyone to be quiet, and his face became serious, "Yes. This feels good. I also feel good, but we must maintain the advantage of the score until the game. The end is the victory!"
"Now you, including me, Gail, and so on, are all happy, but I don't want to see forty-five minutes later, we're leaving London disappointed. Do you know what I mean?"
"clear!"
The players roared in unison.
"Very good!" Wan Sheng praised the player and pointed at the tactics. "Let's start to arrange the tactics for the second half. We need to try our best to take advantage of the score and hold the initiative in our hands..."
......
Compared with the ease of the Derby County locker room, the atmosphere in the home team's locker room at Highbury Stadium was much more solemn. Not a single Arsenal player laughed, and everyone's faces were heavy and serious.
Before the game, none of them thought they would be two goals behind in the first half.
In the eyes of everyone on the Arsenal team, this should have been an easy game. As the league champion last season, one of the two giants of the new century in England, faced a team at their sacred Highbury Stadium. Shouldn't the promotion be an easy victory?
But this is not the case now.
They are two goals behind, the fact that they are in front of them, even now, some people can't believe it.
how can that be possible?
Are we behind? A newly-promoted one behind, and still two goals? But they have to believe because manager Arsene Wenger has walked in with a sullen face.
Wenger stood in front of everyone and just looked at them.
Everyone is reflecting on why the game has become like this. It boils down to two reasons. First, the opponents are not as weak as they thought, and second, their performance is not very good.
Everyone knows these two reasons.
So Wenger didn't talk about the reason at all, he just said in a low voice, "We need to score goals..."
Hearing Wenger's words, many players breathed a sigh of relief.
Wenger is not like other coaches who throws a tantrum when the team is underperforming. The most frightening thing is when he is silent. He just stands there with a sullen face, which will put a lot of pressure on the players. On the contrary, after he speaks, the players feel much less pressure.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. If the team loses like this, many players can imagine that it will be difficult for them to see the coach's smile until the next round of the league.
That's no fun.
"We are Arsenal, the defending champions, and here is Highbury Stadium, there are more than 30,000 Arsenal fans in the stands, and if you don't perform well, all the fans will see it. Two goals behind is not the end of the world. , we still have a chance."
"But I hope in the second half, your performance will change."
Wenger said lightly.
Although the tone is very peaceful, anyone can hear the suppressed anger in his tone. The Frenchman is very dissatisfied with the game, but he will not scold the players. There is no role outside, what he needs is to make the team perform better, not let the players play with more pressure.
......
At half-time, Wenger only talked about the team's goal to score, and did not say anything more about the first half.
Still, he believes the team will be better in the second half because they are Arsenal, they have a lot of big players in the team and they all know what to do in the second half.
But after the start of the second half, Wenger frowned again.
He is not for Arsenal's performance, but for Derby County's tactics, just like the feeling in the second half of the first half, and now this Derby County, who are shrinking their defense, gives him the same feeling as Derby County who played attacking football before. No difference.
The opponent's tactics don't seem to have changed?
Apart from the shrinking formation, he could not see any other changes at all, but the surprising thing was here. Derby County shrunk their formation and began to choose defense, but their formation and playing style remained almost unchanged, and they were still pressing. It is still a fast break, but the pressing is carried out in the half court, and the fast break occasionally depends on the individual ability of the player. In order to ensure safety, the number of backcourt passes will certainly not be so many.
Wenger suddenly thought of a sentence that some media commented on Derby County's tactics last season, "Derby County's offensive football is actually expanding the defensive counterattack to the entire field."
He used to think that this was just a malicious speculation by the hostile Derby County media, but seeing Derby County, which is now shrinking its defense line, he suddenly felt that this sentence was extremely correct.
Derby County is really just shrinking the line!
Here's what makes their tactics and formations surprising. When they didn't shrink the defense line, they played beautiful offensive football and could even suppress Arsenal for a while; after shrinking the defense line, their tactics and formation didn't change. The law has become a defensive counterattack... Seeing this, Wenger feels even more incredible.
How did the Chinese come up with such a defensive and offensive tactic? Most importantly, how did the Derby County team adapt to such a tactic in a short period of time?
Wenger couldn't help but turn his head to look at the coaching bench next to him. The young Chinese man was sitting there firmly, as if he had sensed his gaze. Wan Sheng also looked over here, and the eyes of the two happened to meet.
Wan Sheng smiled at Wenger.
Wenger smiled back.
Wenger suddenly felt that his opponent in the English League seemed to have another one. (To be continued ~^~)