Chapter 782 The devil is in the details!
Manchester City defeated Blackburn 4-2 and won three points again, but the price they paid was that Su Dong only played half the game.
This made the fans at the scene extremely nervous.
Four rounds of games, seven goals, seven assists. With such a transcript, looking at the European football scene, perhaps only Drogba can compete with him. For Manchester City, he is the core fighting force.
Drogba also scored in the fourth round, but only once.
That is to say, now, Su Dong and Drogba are tied in the scorer list, but Su Dong is leading in the assist list.
The contest between Su Dong and Drogba is undoubtedly the most eye-catching duel in the current Premier League, and behind the two are Manchester City and Chelsea, who have also won four consecutive games.
Among them, Chelsea has maintained the top spot in the league standings with the advantage of goal difference.
But there are only two things that really attracted the media's attention, namely Manchester City's two goals conceded and Su Dong's injury.
In the post-match press conference, Guardiola was not satisfied with Manchester City's two goals conceded, and he believed that this could have been avoided.
Not only that, Guardiola also said that he was not satisfied with the goalkeeper's performance.
This has sparked heated discussions in the outside world, because Joe Hart is currently England's national goalkeeper and is recognized as one of the best among the young generation of goalkeepers in England and even European football.
Guardiola is actually not satisfied with Joe Hart? Just because he conceded two goals in this game? The answer is definitely not this.
Within Manchester City, it was clear early on that Guardiola had extremely high demands on goalkeepers. He even often stopped training and gave instructions to Joe Hart, hoping that he could change his way of playing, especially some of his habitual thinking.
Guardiola even arranged for Given to be the main goalkeeper many times during training, but Given's weakness was very obvious.
The 34-year-old Irish veteran is only 1.85 meters tall. When he was young, he was famous for his various amazing saves and firmly controlled the main goalkeeper position of Newcastle. In the past few years, Newcastle has always been a powerful force that cannot be ignored in the Premier League.
But as he gets older, his physical functions gradually decline, and now Given has gradually exposed his weaknesses. When he was young, he could make up for it by relying on his reaction and physical saves, but now, he can no longer save.
More importantly, Guardiola requires goalkeepers not only to be goalkeepers, but also to be involved in ball control in the midfield and backcourt.
This is also an important part of the reform of Spanish goalkeeper training after Van Gaal coached Barcelona. Therefore, in recent years, a group of short goalkeepers such as Valdes, Reina, Casillas, etc. have emerged in Spain, which can almost be said to be mass-produced.
But this is still a very new thing in England.
Joe Hart and Given, both goalkeepers cannot satisfy Guardiola, but Manchester City's current level cannot attract better goalkeepers. For example, Bayern's Neuer is definitely Guardiola's male god, but can he abandon Bayern and come to Manchester City?
Although Su Dong has a very good relationship with Neuer, it is impossible for him to do this.
Not to mention Neuer, Guardiola once thought about recruiting veteran Buffon from Juventus, but Buffon didn't want to come at all, which made it difficult for Manchester City to make any progress in the goalkeeper position.
As a last resort, he had to continue to use Joe Hart and Given, and chose Joe Hart between the two.
In order to help Joe Hart better adapt to this tactical style of play, Guardiola even specially invited the famous goalkeeper coach Unsue from La Liga to come to Manchester to coach.
Speaking of Wen Sue, he is also an old acquaintance of Su Dong.
He was a professional goalkeeper and was Barcelona's substitute goalkeeper during Cruyff's Dream Team period, but he was hardly a teammate of Guardiola because Unsue had left Barcelona after Guardiola was promoted to the first team.
After playing for many teams, he studied relevant coaching courses and specialized in goalkeeper training. After retiring, Unsue went directly to Barcelona and served as Rijkaard's assistant, a job he held for five years.
It was also here that Wen Sue met Su Dong.
After Mourinho took over as coach of Barcelona, he brought in his own goalkeeping coach, and Unsue was forced to leave Barcelona. He has served as head coach of some mid- and lower-level league teams, but his coaching results have not been ideal.
Guardiola wanted to bring him to Manchester City as early as 2009, but he had the opportunity to coach Numancia at that time and politely declined Guardiola. It was not until this summer, after he was sacked from Numancia, that Guardiola invited him again. He joined Manchester City in August and joined Guardiola's coaching team.
But his training of Joe Hart and Given did not go well.
At the end of the day, both players are already established.
…
If goalkeeper became the link that Guardiola was most dissatisfied with, then Su Dong's injury made Guardiola panic.
To see how violent and aggressive the Premier League is, just look at Su Dong's legs.
Basically, he would be injured after every game.
The bleeding against Blackburn was only slightly more serious.
But even so, Guardiola still criticized Blackburn's brutal foul at the post-match press conference.
"What I find most unbelievable is that for many actions that should have resulted in a card, the referee didn't even call a foul."
Not only Guardiola, but also technical director Begiristain criticized the referee's weakness, believing that players of Su Dong's level should be given more protection instead of allowing him to be violated by defensive players.
Having said that, who would listen to the voices of Manchester City players nowadays? If Ferguson came out and yelled, the referee would probably be a little more cautious, but Guardiola and Begiristain don't have that kind of power.
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Su Dong's injury caused him to miss the training the day after the game, and he also did not travel to Austria in the middle of the week. In the starting lineup against Salzburg Red Bull, Santa Cruz replaced Su Dong as the team's starting center.
But the result is very depressing.
Manchester City did not suffer any attack from Salzburg Red Bull away from home. The famous Dutch coach Stevens still focused on defense when facing Manchester City, allowing Manchester City to take control of the game and frequently create opportunities.
But all the opportunities created by Manchester City were wasted.
David Silva, Di Maria, Sanchez, Santa Cruz, Gareth Barry...
Throughout the first half, Manchester City's attack could be made into a collection of missed opportunities.
On the contrary, Red Bull Salzburg did not pose much substantial threat to Manchester City.
Perhaps it was because of this that Manchester City's defense was a little too arrogant, pressing forward frequently and causing loopholes in the defense.
Before the end of the first half, Salzburg player Skaia made a lob shot from outside the penalty area, which passed the goalkeeper Joe Hart who was standing in front and fell into the goal, scoring the first goal for Salzburg Red Bull.
Manchester City entered the halftime break with a scoreline of 0-1 behind.
…
In the visiting team's locker room at the Red Bull Arena, Guardiola's face was livid, with the word "anger" written all over his face.
He was very, very dissatisfied with the team's performance in the first half.
Thirteen shots, at least five good chances to score, but none of them went in! "You guys give me the feeling of a group of kids who can't play football at all. I don't even know what to say anymore!"
Guardiola was really angry.
The first official European game was also the first official European game in Guardiola's coaching career. Even though it was just the Europa League, the opponent was not weak, but Manchester City played like this. How could Guardiola accept it? The players were also very depressed.
They really tried their best, but they just didn't play very well.
It's a very strange feeling.
The smooth sailing this season has given them an illusion that the team's offense is well-coordinated, everyone knows how to cooperate and how to play, so the offense is successful no matter how they play.
Especially attackers like Di Maria, Sanchez and David Silva, they feel that they are in very good shape.
But when it came to tonight's game, they found that they were hitting obstacles everywhere and nothing was going well.
Just like Di Maria, he missed a great chance in the first half.
Was that his problem? When Di Maria made his move, Santa Cruz passed the ball back to him. The two of them had the awareness of cooperation, but the problem was that it was not enough to just have the awareness of cooperation. Under the interference of the defensive players, Santa Cruz passed the ball to Di Maria a little bit slower, and also did not pass it to his left foot, which was his best position.
The result was that after Di Maria caught up, he couldn't just shoot directly, but had to stop and adjust.
It was this stop that made Di Maria miss a great opportunity. It seemed as if he had stopped the ball on purpose and missed the opportunity.
In fact, he was also wronged!
This is true for Sanchez, David Silva and others.
Gradually, they all figured it out.
The devil is in the details!
In the previous few games, the team played well because of Su Dong's presence.
Su Dong led them in playing, not only sharing most of the defensive pressure for them, but also constantly creating opportunities for them, and they were all very good opportunities. Every pass was given very accurately and comfortably.
In contrast, Santa Cruz had a hard time dealing with the two central defenders of Red Bull Salzburg. What good ball could he pass? Sometimes it was like this.
When you have something, you don’t feel it’s anything special, and you don’t know how to cherish it. You think everything is taken for granted. You may even feel that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have it, and you can still be awesome and do everything well.
But only when they lose him will they understand how important he is.
It's just that the feeling of being taught a lesson is really unpleasant! But the Manchester City players were obviously hit hard.
After all, Stevens is a famous Dutch coach. His defense was organized very tightly and severely dampened Manchester City's morale.
Because of this, when Su Dong was called into the locker room by Estiat, he clearly felt that the atmosphere around his teammates had changed.
After finally getting the chance to wear the captain's armband, when Sabaletta saw Su Dong coming in, he immediately took off the captain's armband as if it was a hot potato and stuffed it directly into Su Dong's hand.
This action caused laughter in the locker room.
(End of this chapter)
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