From the Man Behind the Football King to the Football King

Chapter 814: Poor Condition

After returning to the UK from Hungary, Manchester United faced two back-to-back games against Brighton within three days, both of which were away games.

Brighton is a coastal city in southern England. Its landmark building is the Royal Pavilion. Brighton is famous for its pebbled beaches.

Manchester United came here, of course, not to enjoy the scenery.

Due to the upset loss to Crystal Palace in the second round of the league, Manchester United's current situation is not good. Although they won both games last week, advanced to the fourth round of the League Cup, and won the fifth European Super Cup in team history, Manchester United still hopes to see the team win in the Premier League.

However, Manchester United's game at the Union Community Stadium was very difficult.

They failed to get enough rest before the season, and the schedule was very intensive after the start of the season, which made the players look very tired.

In the first half of the game, the entire Manchester United team was obviously in poor condition. Brighton was obviously the better side, and they suppressed Manchester United comprehensively.

In the 39th minute, Brighton midfielder Lamptey dribbled into the penalty area and fell to the ground after a slight contact with Bruno. The referee Chris Kavanagh immediately awarded a penalty.

Although Bruno appealed to the referee that he did not commit a foul and the contact between the two sides was completely normal, the referee Kavanagh did not accept Bruno's appeal and insisted on the penalty. Mo Pai scored a penalty kick and Brighton 1:0 United.

The fact is that Manchester United was very lucky to fall behind in the score until this time. Before that, Brighton's Trossard and Webster had hit the goal frame three times in the 9th, 20th and 29th minutes of the game.

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After falling behind, Manchester United quickly equalized the score in just 3 minutes. In the 42nd minute, Manchester United won a free kick on the left side of the penalty area. Bruno took the penalty kick himself. The football drew a perfect arc and flew into Brighton's goal. Brighton 1:1 Manchester United.

In the first half of the game, Brighton was obviously the better side. They completely suppressed Manchester United, with 7 shots, 3 shots on target, and 3 shots hitting the post, while Manchester United only had 3 shots.

The most important thing is that in the first half of the game, Manchester United almost didn't get any half-balls. This made Mourinho very angry. During the halftime break, the magic bird was furious in the locker room and sprayed everyone, even Bruno.

Bruno's performance in this first half was not good. Although he scored a beautiful free kick, and the penalty kick was suspected of being misjudged, in the first half, the Manchester United midfield led by him did not control the situation on the field.

In fact, Bruno was also very depressed.

In this game, Brighton, who played at home, played very tough. Every confrontation with Manchester United seemed to be desperate, and the scene of people falling down on the field kept appearing.

After a period of tough confrontation, the three players on the Manchester United front line became very afraid to confront the opponent, which also caused them to lose almost all the half-balls, and even some balls that were originally in an advantageous position were snatched by Brighton players who kicked harder.

In the entire first half, according to official statistics, Bruno only passed 26 of 44 passes, with a success rate of only 59%.

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Bruno knew very well that his passes were no different from usual. After all, his passes were very accurate after eight years of training in the system.

However, due to the poor condition of the strikers, they were not in the correct running rhythm at all, and they were afraid of confronting the opponent, which led to many of Bruno's passes being snatched by the opponent, which also caused Bruno's pass success rate in the first half to fall to an incredible level.

You know, since he moved to Manchester United, his pass success rate has never been lower than 90%.

In the first half today, his pass success rate can be said to have fallen off a cliff.

In this case, Mourinho was naturally very annoyed. So even though he knew that Bruno was not to blame, as the captain of the team, Bruno was also responsible for the team's poor performance in the first half.

Rashford was the one who was criticized the most by Mourinho. This Manchester United youth training genius had a disastrous performance in the first half. Not only was he afraid to confront his opponent, but he was also very unenthusiastic in running, and could even be said to be lazy.

Before the start of the second half, Mourinho replaced Rashford with Greenwood.

You know, the head coach rarely makes substitutions at the beginning of the second half, unless it is because of injuries or a player performs too poorly in the first half.

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The Manchester United players who were severely criticized by Mourinho were thinking about giving the home team a head start after the start of the second half, but they didn't expect that the team would be awarded a penalty kick again just after the game started.

In the 46th minute, Gundogan had physical contact with Connolly in the penalty area. The referee Kavanagh awarded a penalty, but after confirmation by VAR, the penalty was cancelled.

This penalty scare made Manchester United players sweat coldly, and they finally woke up and performed at a relatively normal level.

In the 54th minute of the game, Gundogan sent a straight pass from the backcourt, and Bruno broke into the penalty area and scored after continuous dribbling, helping Manchester United to overtake the score.

In the 60th minute of the game, Brighton got another chance, but unfortunately the team's shot hit the inner post and bounced out. This was Brighton's fourth post in this game.

In the 77th minute of the game, Brighton got another single shot and hit the post again. It has to be said that their luck was a bit bad.

Just when all Manchester United fans around the world thought that Manchester United could get 3 points with difficulty, in the 5th minute of injury time, Brighton passed the ball to the back point again. This time, March finally seized the opportunity and scored with a header.

To be honest, he had a chance to score four goals in this game. He had previously had three excellent shooting and scoring opportunities in front of Cancelo, but unfortunately he was unable to seize them.

If Rashford was the worst performer for Manchester United in the first half, then Cancelo was the worst performer in the second half. The right side of Manchester United, which he guarded, became a free channel for Brighton. If it weren't for the poor ability of Brighton players to seize opportunities, Manchester United would have been beaten into a sieve by Brighton in this game.

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The game was tied in the 5th minute of injury time, and there was little time left. This made Manchester United fans all over the world extremely disappointed. They seemed to see that the team had missed 3 points twice in the first three rounds of this season.

At the critical moment, Bruno, the captain, stood up.

After the Manchester United midfielder kicked off, he quickly entered the front court. Harry Kane's shot was blocked out of the baseline and Manchester United got a corner kick opportunity.

Bruno took a corner kick and accurately found Maguire. However, his header was hit by Maupai, and the referee decisively awarded a penalty kick.

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At this time, it was already the 7th minute of injury time, which had exceeded 6 minutes of injury time, so this penalty kick caused great dissatisfaction among the home team players, who believed that the referee gave too much injury time.

However, there is no problem with this approach. The injury time given by the referee is not completely accurate. In the game, the final injury time can be determined according to the situation. It is okay to end it early or give more injury time.

As the first penalty taker of Manchester United, Bruno stood up without hesitation. And the penalty he took was scored without any surprise, and Manchester United defeated Brighton in the last second!

After winning this difficult victory, Manchester United's ranking in the standings rose to eighth.

It is worth mentioning that this round of games has exposed another shocking upset, that is, Guardiola's Manchester City, which lost 2:5 to Leicester City at home, which was simply shocking.

After losing this game, Manchester City, which had only 3 points and played one less game, ranked 15th in the standings and almost fell into the relegation zone.

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Three days later, on the evening of October 1, Manchester United continued to challenge Brighton at the same American Express Community Stadium.

This is the fourth round of the League Cup this season.

At the pre-match press conference, coach Mourinho said, "We are currently in a stage of intensive competitions, and we will make corresponding adjustments. The team will have two sets of lineups for the league and cup games, so we will make certain adjustments to the lineup, which will be very similar to the game against Luton last week."

The trend of the game was just as Mourinho said, Manchester United won a big victory away from home.

In the first half of the game, Mata assisted McTominay to score a header; in the second half of the game, Bellingham assisted Mata with a heel to expand the score, and then Bellingham scored directly with a beautiful free kick.

At the end of the game, Manchester United defeated Brighton 3:0 and advanced to the quarterfinals of this season's League Cup.

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As time entered October, the summer transfer window, which was postponed due to the epidemic, was also approaching closing.

On the second day after Manchester United advanced to the quarterfinals of the League Cup, that is, on Friday afternoon local time in the UK, the Premier League giants Chelsea officially announced a transfer, that is, the Blues signed English goalkeeper Dean Henderson from another giant Red Devils Manchester United.

Although neither party has announced the transfer amount, according to a well-informed media reporter, the transfer amount is as high as 60 million pounds.

In addition, the contract signed by the two parties, as revealed by the transfer expert, also contains a buyback clause.

The buyback clause is different from the right of first refusal. It does not require the consent of the receiving club, but is automatically triggered after the agreed terms are met, such as how much money within one year, how much money within two years, and how much money is when the terms are met, including whether it can be repurchased within a few years or not in the first few years.

Compared with the advantage of renting, on the one hand, the club that receives the young player can train more wholeheartedly. After all, it is the player who owns the ownership with his own money, and it is a big profit to buy him back after training well. It has been applied by more and more clubs in transactions. The more successful cases in the football world are Casemiro and Carvajal of Real Madrid, which are all signed, transferred, and repurchased.

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