Chapter 830 This winter is particularly cold!
On the afternoon of December 11th, in the 17th round of the Premier League, Manchester City traveled south to London to challenge West Ham United away.
When the game reached the 30th minute, David Silva took a corner kick and Su Dong headed the ball into the goal in the penalty area, scoring the first goal for Manchester City.
Just four minutes later, Di Maria made a cross from the left and Toni Kroos scored another goal for Manchester City with a long shot from the edge of the penalty area.
After the second half, Toni Kroos passed the ball from the front of the penalty area, Su Dong cut diagonally into the left side of the penalty area and calmly shot with his left foot, further expanding the score to three to zero.
David Silva and Di Maria then scored for Manchester City, helping the team take a 5-0 lead.
At the last minute of the game, West Ham United managed to pull one back and save face at home.
Manchester City eventually defeated the Hammers 5-1 and won three points again.
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Also in London, Chelsea drew 1-1 with Tottenham Hotspur away from home, suffering the embarrassment of five consecutive defeats. Their league ranking also plummeted, and they were even about to be replaced by Tottenham Hotspur.
Manchester United beat Arsenal 1-0 at their home ground, earning three points again and continuing to closely follow Manchester City.
Ferguson once again launched a psychological warfare after the game, saying that Manchester United had made sufficient preparations.
"I believe that Manchester City will lose points during the Christmas schedule and the winter break."
Liverpool lost 1-3 to Newcastle away from home and still couldn't get out of the shadow of defeat.
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A week later, in the 18th round of the Premier League, Manchester City faced Everton at home.
In accordance with Guardiola and the coaching staff, Buenaventura strengthened the team's training and rotated the game lineup. It was the first time that Su Dong failed to make the roster.
Manchester City was originally determined to win this game. After all, Everton's performance this season was not ideal, and Manchester City was playing at home. Guardiola was also full of confidence in the game, so he rotated Su Dong.
As a result, just four minutes into the game, there was a defensive mistake and Cahill scored the first goal for Everton.
This made Manchester City a little anxious, and in the 19th minute, Leighton Baines scored another goal for Everton.
This is really embarrassing.
This England international, who has been linked with Manchester City, seemed to want to show his strength in front of Manchester City and directly forced Manchester City into a desperate situation.
Although Manchester City launched consecutive attacks afterwards, they were still unable to score. It was not until the 82nd minute of the second half that Sanchez scored a goal for Manchester City, but this could not prevent Manchester City from losing at home.
In the end, Manchester City was upset by Everton at home with a score of 1-2.
This was Manchester City's first defeat in the Premier League in the new season, and their second defeat after being eliminated from the League Cup.
Head coach Guardiola publicly stated in the post-match press conference that he was willing to take responsibility for the defeat.
"I underestimated our opponents. Everton is not as fragile as they appear in the league rankings. Moyes' team showed great strength in our home ground and posed a great threat to them."
Guardiola said the coaching staff did not do a good enough job in rotation.
Su Dong's absence dealt a heavy blow to Manchester City's offense, which led to the home defeat.
At the same time, Guardiola also said that the team will introduce strong reinforcements during the winter break.
The media revealed that Manchester City's potential targets include Wolfsburg's center Dzeko and Ajax's striker Luis Suarez. The former has been famous for a long time, while the latter has performed well in Ajax and has attracted the attention of many teams.
If Dzeko fails to come to the club, Guardiola will sign Suarez from Ajax.
While Manchester City was upset by Everton, Manchester United defeated Chelsea 2-1 away from home, successfully narrowing the gap with Manchester City.
Ferguson said with pride after the game that he had guessed that Manchester City would lose points.
“This is just the beginning!”
"Like I said, this year the cold front in the UK came particularly early and was particularly cold!"
What Ferguson meant was that Manchester City would continue to lose points.
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Manchester City did not receive too much blame for losing to Everton at home.
This is the first defeat of the new season. If this is to be blamed, then all other Premier League teams should commit suicide.
More importantly, Manchester City's leading position still cannot be easily shaken.
In other words, Manchester City still has the capital to continue to die! After losing to Everton, Manchester City's continued recruitment has finally seen results.
Begiristain personally went to Barcelona to negotiate and finally successfully signed Barcelona midfielder Thiago.
The player cost Manchester City a total of 15 million pounds, and was joined by Barcelona's youth team player Bellerin.
The two players became Barcelona's first signing during the winter break.
One of the important reasons why Thiago joined Manchester City was that he was not valued by Mourinho at Barcelona.
Everyone knows that Mourinho is not good at using this kind of technical midfielder.
Barcelona management is determined to bring Arsenal captain Fabregas back to Camp Nou, and even offered 50 million euros, plus an offer for Thiago, to try to convince Wenger to let him go.
This made Thiago's father feel ashamed and angry. He felt that his son was the core of the Spanish national youth team after all and should not be a bonus for other players' transfers. It happened that Guardiola extended an olive branch at this time, so Thiago hit it off.
The only thing left is to convince the Barcelona management to release the player, which is obviously not an easy task. After all, there is a natural opposition between Manchester City and Barcelona, whether it was the competition between Guardiola and Mourinho for the Barcelona coaching position, or what Cruyff said now, that Barcelona's orthodoxy lies in Manchester City, all these have caused deep grievances between the two teams.
Everyone can see that Manchester City today is actually replicating the success of Barcelona in the past, from the management to the coaching staff to the players, and this is what Rosell does not want to see.
But under the insistence of Thiago and his father, Barcelona finally chose to compromise.
Fifteen million pounds is a high price for a young player who cannot play many games in the first team. As for Bellerin, he can only play for the youth team at present.
It is worth mentioning that both Thiago and Bellerin are targets of Arsenal Wenger. Thiago is also favored by Manchester United's Ferguson. Now, both players have been intercepted by Manchester City, which makes Wenger furious.
After Manchester City announced that they had reached a consensus with Barcelona and would officially sign the two players after the transfer market opened on January 1, Wenger immediately accepted the media and said that he would never sell Fabregas to Barcelona.
This is too much bullying! We clearly agreed to use Thiago as a bonus, I just wanted to raise the price, but you sold him directly to my competitor, do you still have sincerity? In fact, Wenger has also seen clearly that Fabregas is hard to train and will leave the team sooner or later.
Even though he is wearing the captain's armband of Arsenal, he is always thinking about Barcelona in his heart. This feeling of sleeping in the same bed but dreaming different dreams makes Wenger feel like there is a Hulunbuir grassland above his head.
Originally, he could still tolerate it for the transfer fee and Thiago, but now even his carefully selected backup has thrown into the arms of a competitor. How can Wenger accept this emotionally?
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After signing Thiago and Bellerin, Manchester City technical director Begiristain did not return to Manchester from Barcelona, but flew directly to Pele for final negotiations with the Belgian team Genk.
This deal has been in talks for a long time, and Manchester City is very interested. After agent Mendes got wind of the deal early on, he has been trying to make things happen for Manchester City, and now he has finally convinced Genk.
For 15 million euros, Manchester City successfully packaged two young players from Genk, De Bruyne and Courtois.
The two players have received strong attention from Premier League teams including Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Chelsea has even arranged for scouts to go to Belgium every week to spy on the two players' games.
With the help of Mendes' relationship, Manchester City took the lead and packaged the two players first, but one of the conditions was that Manchester City must loan the two players back to Genk.
The Belgian team has performed well this season and is currently in need of players, so one of the conditions for agreeing to the transfer to Manchester City is that the two players continue to stay in Belgium in the second half of the season until the end of the season.
There is even a clause in the terms that if Genk feels it is necessary, they can negotiate with Manchester City to continue to loan De Bruyne for next season after the end of this season.
This is also in Manchester City's interests.
At present, the Blue Moon is not short of people in the midfield, but mainly lacks goalkeepers.
Guardiola's evaluation of Courtois is pretty good. Although his characteristics are very different from the type of goalkeeper he wants most, Neuer, Courtois comes from the wing, has decent footwork and good passing skills. I believe that with some polishing, he should be able to do the job.
The signing of two Belgian players was also considered by the Manchester Evening News to be a wake-up call for Joe Hart and Given.
"Guardiola is using this signing to remind Manchester City's two goalkeepers that they'd better get in better shape, otherwise, maybe next season, they will completely lose their positions as the main and second goalkeepers."
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First, they signed Thiago and Bellerin, and then signed De Bruyne and Courtois. Manchester City's continuous signings before the winter break were all talented young players, which also annoyed rivals such as Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal.
These are the young talents they have been paying attention to for a long time, and now they are all recruited by Manchester City.
Wenger publicly called in the media for a review of Manchester City's finances.
The Frenchman said he believed Manchester City's way of doing business was a disruption to the virtuous cycle of professional football.
On the contrary, Chelsea is currently caught in a coaching crisis for head coach Ancelotti. The team has not been able to get out of the quagmire of six consecutive defeats and has no time to deal with Manchester City.
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After signing four new players in succession, Manchester City also organized a Christmas dinner by the club before Christmas.
This should be the first time that Su Dong attended such a large gathering organized by the club as captain.
(End of this chapter)
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