Legend of Fengshen

Chapter 980 Advance to the quarterfinals
It wasn't until the 78th minute that Pellegrini made a second substitution, replacing Nasri with Boni.

"Bonny came to Manchester City in this winter transfer window. He cost Manchester City £2800 million. He scored well at Sparta Prague, Vitesse and Swansea. He is strong and has a good header. , can be used as the fulcrum of the frontcourt attack! But Pellagrini’s substitution is a bit like a headache!” Zhou Qiang, who was in a good mood, commented on the Chilean engineer’s substitution.

What he said was not wrong. Pellegrini found that there was no fulcrum in the frontcourt, and he could not penetrate. Naturally, he needed a fulcrum. In order to control the midfield situation, he had to replace Dzeko. Now the frontcourt needs a scramble. The person who headed the ball had to replace Nasri again.

This is not over. In the 83rd minute, he replaced Fernandinho with Lampard. Fernandinho is a player who focuses on defense. The defense is very tough. Lampard's organization The scheduling ability is undoubtedly much better than that of Fernandinho. Pellegrini's adjustment is obviously to strengthen the control of the midfield.

During this period of time, Liverpool's physical fitness has declined so much that they had to retreat to defend. Even Zhang Yuan retreated to the midfield, sacrificing Wufengzhen, creating conditions for Manchester City to return to Lampard.

However, Manchester City, who had already spared everything, still failed to score another goal after all!
The fans cheered again at Anfield when Clattenburg blew the final whistle, three points worth six, and the gap between Liverpool and Manchester City was reduced to four points, one game less than Chelsea. 6 points less.

The actions of the two teams today were not particularly intense, and there was no conflict on the pitch. After the game, the Manchester City players reluctantly accepted the bitter fruit, maintained their generosity, and fought with the Liverpool players one after another. Shake hands.

"Today we are a bit out of shape!" Aguero and Zhang Yuan said when exchanging jerseys.

"Hehe!" Zhang Yuan smiled enigmatically, thinking disapprovingly, you guys are not in good shape, could this be the reason for losing!
Players like Aguero were a bit unconvinced, while Pellegrini jokingly attributed the loss to luck, "Our luck was too bad in this game. They scored two good long-range shots. Zhang Yuan We were in a good situation when we didn't score the second goal, but his shot was impeccable. We have a chance with Field playing double striker."

His move to replace Boni on the court also became a key topic for reporters to ask him after the game. To put it bluntly, he questioned the Chilean engineer's on-the-spot command. Boni's performance was worse, worse than Dzeko's.

Pellegrini can only be perfunctory and lose to Liverpool. Considering that Chelsea has one less game, the point difference between Manchester City and Chelsea will be 5 points to 8 points. This undoubtedly basically declares that Manchester City will defend the title this season. will fail.

The Champions League was defeated by Barcelona at home. At the most critical moment of the championship, they lost to Klopp's Liverpool. Needless to say, it will be a difficult time for Pellegrini in the future. The possibility of getting out of class. After the game, some reporters talked about this issue. Pellegrini is still insisting. He thinks he will not get out of class. As for whether it will really be known, only the boss of Manchester City will know. It is true that the Manchester City boss is a relatively patient employer.

Non-stop, on the night of March 3th, in the 4th round of the league, Liverpool won Burnley 28-2 at home. Zhang Yuan scored another goal in this game. So far, Liverpool has won 0 consecutive victories. In these 3 games, Zhang Yuan has scored 3 goals, which is a great contribution.

On the evening of March 3th, the second round of the UEFA Champions League Round of 10 kicked off. Prior to this, Liverpool defeated Porto 2-0 in the first round and took the lead in qualifying.

This time as a guest at the Dragon Stadium, Klopp became pragmatic and played a defensive counterattack. Judging from the current situation of Liverpool, Klopp is very clear that his team's physical problems are very serious, and the game is too difficult. A little more.

Of course, Porto took the initiative to attack at the beginning of this game. A 2:0 deficit is a considerable score in the Champions League. Not many in the Champions League can come back after losing two goals in the first round. Porto Compared with Liverpool's own strength, there is still a considerable gap.

Klopp still resorted to a double midfielder configuration in this game, with Henderson and Can in charge, Gerrard who had just recovered from his injury was excluded from the starting lineup by him, but today Henderson and Can The goal is much simpler, and Klopp's task for him is to defend.

Offensively, Klopp's passes were much simpler, passing quickly across the wings to make effective use of the gaps inserted by the Porto full-backs.

To be fair, Porto played really well today and scored a goal after only 5 minutes of the opening. However, this was the final score. In the end, they failed to change the score. , The defense is also good. Zhang Yuan, Coutinho and Sterling in the frontcourt are not kidding, and Porto has also encountered danger several times.

Zhang Yuan was very happy to be able to advance to the quarter-finals smoothly. His condition was not particularly good, and he missed some good opportunities in this game. Zhang Yuan has been adjusting his mentality and must learn to accept losing. Now he also Knowing to look at Liverpool in a fair way, first of all, Liverpool is not good at midfield and defenders. It is very good to break into the quarter-finals.

In an interview after the game, Zhang Yuan also expressed his joy, "We deserved to advance, and now we have entered the quarterfinals. The opponents below will definitely not be easy, but we will continue to work hard and strive to get there. farther!"

What Zhang Yuan said was to go further, not to win the championship. A reporter asked about the possibility of Liverpool winning the championship.

The possibility of this is a bit small, Zhang Yuan thinks so, the reasons are actually those, the team he played for before is different from Liverpool, the best offensive team is Real Madrid, there are so many explosive points, anyone can make a few shots, attack The worst ability is the former Schalke 04, the best defense is Juventus, and the worst is Liverpool.

Schalke 03, Real Madrid, and Juventus all have good defense. After coming to Liverpool, Zhang Yuan discovered that it is actually much easier to train the team’s offense than to train the defense. But as a strong team, you can’t just focus on defense. There is a lack of offensive power on the field. Real Madrid is relatively balanced under Mourinho, while Liverpool is typically top-heavy. The most tiring, the coverage area should be particularly large.

For Liverpool with poor defense, Zhang Yuan can almost conclude that he will not go too far. This is basically the consensus of everyone. Today, out of consideration of various factors, Klopp rarely chose a conservative strategy. The team Porto scored a goal. If it were Real Madrid, Bayern or Barcelona, ​​maybe Liverpool would have conceded more than one goal today.

Back in the league, Liverpool challenged Swansea away on March 3. Swansea has played really well this season. Coach Monk played for Swansea in his player days and was the captain of Swansea. -In the middle of the 17 season, Laudrup led the team with poor results and dismissed from Swansea. The Swansea executives made a bold decision at that time to let Monk lead the team as a player and coach. The team's relegation, of course, has become a matter of course for a full-time head coach.

Swansea's home record this season is very good. As a relegation team, it has won 14 games in the past 7 home games and only lost 40 games. That is quite good. Manchester United, Arsenal Swansea and other strong teams have all stumbled in Swansea. Swansea currently has 10 points and is 9 points behind Southampton, which is sixth. There are [-] league rounds left, and there is still a chance to hit the European war. Hope, so they will definitely want to try their best to win this game.

(End of this chapter)