Chapter 355 Successful Defense

"Chelsea narrowly beat Tottenham Hotspur, Terry became the hero of the team"

"Chelsea are not scary, they are just a one-man team"

"Allen is to Chelsea what Jordan is to the Bulls"

………

The next day, almost all newspapers and magazines in England reported on the game. They did not pay too much attention to Chelsea's victory or Terry's last-minute goal, but focused on Chelsea's performance in the second half.

In this regard, the comments of The Sun are very thought-provoking. They said: "When Wang Li left the field, Chelsea seemed to have turned directly into a mid-level Premier League team. Whether in offense or defense, they gave people a feeling of powerlessness. The team's continued victory may be more due to Allen's personal performance, nothing more."

"From the second half of the game, we can see that Chelsea is very weak in attack. In the whole 45 minutes, they only had 3 shots. This performance is really different from the first half. Maybe now these stars have completely pinned their hopes of victory on Allen alone. So when Allen can't play, will Chelsea face continued losses?"

The Guardian finally found an opportunity to criticize Chelsea. In their report, they talked a lot about Chelsea's weak offense, calling Chelsea a building without a foundation. If it was poked lightly, it would collapse. Although all English fans knew that The Guardian was Chelsea's mortal enemy, at least in this game, Chelsea's performance was indeed like that. Without Wang Li, they could not show the momentum of the Premier League's dominant team.

Many media believe that head coach Mourinho should prevent the development of this crisis situation. Perhaps an NBA basketball team can become a one-man team. The performance of a superstar player will definitely have a huge impact on the game, such as Jordan, O'Neal, Kobe, Iverson, etc. But for a European professional football team, a one-man team almost means failure, because no player can guarantee to play in every game, even Wang Li who is rarely affected by injuries.

Obviously, if such a team can dominate the Premier League, it would be the same as Wang Li alone dominating the Premier League, which is absolutely unacceptable to the fans.

There is no need for the media to remind him, Mourinho has already realized this problem. In fact, he knows very well the reason for this situation.

Mourinho is good at the team's defense, but because of the presence of Wang Li, Chelsea's performance in offense is too strong, which means that in many games there is no need for any defensive counterattacks, and the opponent can be directly destroyed by just bombarding. It can be said that in the games with Wang Li's participation, Chelsea only needs to use a large-scale offensive tactic and is not afraid of any opponent at all, even Arsenal, Barcelona and others who are strong in offense.

However, with the strong performance in offense, the players have become accustomed to using offense to win, and Chelsea players unconsciously became lax in the backcourt defense. Defensive players like William Gallas and John Terry continued to attack, which was the fundamental reason for Chelsea's poor defensive performance in the last game.

On the other hand, it is a tactical issue. Recently, Chelsea has been training basically on the "zone attack tactics". This tactic is very powerful, at least the games against Manchester United and Arsenal have fully demonstrated this. This makes the team's offense completely revolve around Wang Li. When Wang Li leaves the court, the offensive players will definitely be at a loss because they can't find the center of the team's offense.

Of course, although the above are the main reasons, there is one more point that is the most important - with the continuous victory in the game, an impetuous mood has arisen in the Chelsea team. Although Mourinho has been reminding the players not to be arrogant, the results are in front of them, and the players still more or less believe that the team's strength is simply not comparable to that of other teams.

This is also the important reason why Mourinho wants to use a failure to remind the players.

Therefore, after the match with Tottenham Hotspur, Mourinho did not give the team a holiday at all. Instead, he required all players to attend training during the 7 free days and not to take leave.

In the daily training of the past few days, we do some ordinary training in the morning. Without hurting the physical condition of the players, we add some intensive training. In the afternoon, we have the team competition. This competition is very different from the previous one.

Wang Li was assigned to the substitute team and sometimes even served as a referee on the sidelines.

This type of training match is mainly to let the players experience how to play the ball without Wang Li on the court, so that they can return to their normal state and regain their confidence.

Facts have proved that the main team performed very poorly without Wang Li. They were even defeated by the substitute team in the first two days. Of course, this was mainly because daily training was not like real games. Players often did not really fight or grab the balls. Also, Wang Li was too strong. He always scored goals for the substitute team alone.

But this also made Mourinho furious. After each training session, the main team would be scolded and verbally attacked by him.

However, as this training continued, the main team slowly found their form. At this time, it was a bit difficult for Wang Li to lead the substitute team to win the score. After all, although the strength of Chelsea's substitutes and main players was not much different, they were still incomparable in terms of cooperation.

On the fourth day, Wang Li was banned from playing by head coach Mourinho. He took over the assistant coach's job and acted as a referee on the field.

This job was indeed very novel, and Wang Li enjoyed it very much. When Mourinho was not watching the game, he began to find pleasure in "warning the players on the field", which made many teammates glare at him, but they were powerless to do anything.

Fortunately, we have been doing closed training these days, otherwise the media would definitely use the headline "Disharmony in Chelsea locker room, Allen has conflicts with all teammates" again.

However, not all the news about Chelsea recently made Mourinho angry. One good news is that Ricardo Carvalho has finally recovered from his injury. The return of this powerful Portuguese super defender finally made Mourinho smile again. As a veteran who followed Mourinho in the Porto era, Carvalho's position in the hearts of the Portuguese is unquestionable.

On January 22, Chelsea's match against Portsmouth at Stamford Bridge also became Carvalho's first game after returning from injury.

In this game, Mourinho, who has been worried about the team's condition recently, did not send Wang Li to play, but other positions were all main players. Obviously, he regarded this as a training game, which could also test the team's current condition.

Chelsea's starting lineup surprised Portsmouth head coach Zajec. In fact, although the media have been talking about topics such as "Chelsea is a one-man team" and "the first place in the Premier League is just an empty shell" in recent days, Zajec still did not have much hope for the game.

Because even if Chelsea is a one-man team, as long as Wang Li is on the field, Portsmouth still has no chance. Zajec will not be arrogant enough to think that Portsmouth's defenders can defend Wang Li, which is something that Manchester United, Arsenal and other giants have not been able to do.

However, Wang Li did not play in this game. Although Chelsea had key players in other positions, Zayech still saw hope of winning. Now, in the eyes of many Premier League coaches, Wang Li is simply a bug on the football field. In any case, although the game without him also depends on the strength of the two teams, luck also plays a big role.

The mentality of Portsmouth players was similar to that of the head coach. Without Wang Li on the court, they felt little pressure, so they played the game very relaxed.

In this game, Mourinho used the 433 formation he is good at. The goalkeeper was Thomas Clarke, the defenders were William Gallas, John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho and Wayne Bridge, the three midfielders were Frank Lampard, Claude Makelele and Joe Cole, and the three forwards were Arjen Robben, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Damien Duff.

In this formation, the front, middle and back lines are almost all main players. The only difference is that Wang Li failed to play. Despite this, the Blues fans in Stamford Bridge were still not very interested, because many people are now accustomed to watching the games in which Wang Li played, because Chelsea would play very exciting games in that kind of games.

However, there are still many loyal fans who are very interested in the team's state when Wang Li is not there. Due to the extensive media coverage, the fans have also gained relevant understanding of the current problems facing Chelsea. They also want to know what kind of state Chelsea can perform without Wang Li participating in the game.

But obviously, the game on the field now is very different from the performance when Wang Li is on the court. Although Mourinho's 433 formation is all attack and defense, it is more important to defend. However, facing a team like Portsmouth, although the offense is much weaker than the previous performance, there are still some wonderful cooperation.

Although the morale of the Portsmouth players was very high, even if Chelsea did not have Wang Li on the field, they would not be Chelsea's opponent given their current level as a relegated team.

So, the situation in the game was like this: in the first 20 minutes, both teams performed very well, with wonderful performances frequently coming out, making the fans truly feel that the game was worth the price of the ticket.

However, in the 21st minute, Chelsea's right winger Damien Duff made a straight pass, giving Icelander Gudjohnsson a chance to score. He turned his back and suddenly accelerated to shake off the defender, then received the ball and won a beautiful one-on-one opportunity. Gudjohnsson did not waste this hard-won opportunity. He shot from a small angle to score the first goal for Chelsea.

In the subsequent games, Portsmouth's morale obviously dropped seriously, because their players on the field realized that even without Wang Li, Chelsea was still not someone they could shake, so they put more energy into defense and the game entered a tense state.

In the 74th minute of the second half, Lampard took advantage of a set-piece opportunity to score another goal for the team, setting the score at 2:0.

After the game, many media also affirmed Chelsea's performance. They began to talk about "Chelsea regaining their form". Although 2:0 was really not very eye-catching compared to the previous games where they had always won by a large margin, the fact that they were able to easily defeat Portsmouth without Wang Li still showed that Chelsea's strength was not comparable to that of ordinary mid-level Premier League teams.

Imagine that Wang Li could score 2 or even 3 goals in every game, which is why Chelsea always wins by a large margin. Without Wang Li, a score of 2:0 is indeed normal. Even if Manchester United or Arsenal face Portsmouth, they can only achieve this score.

So, it seems that everything is going well, Chelsea has regained its previous form, and the media has begun to pay attention to Chelsea's winning streak again, because they know that in a very important game, Mourinho will not let a strong superstar go unused, and no opponent will consider how to defeat Chelsea in a game without Wang Li's participation, which is obviously unrealistic.

Soon, the media's focus returned to Manchester United and Chelsea, because the second round of the League Cup was about to take place and Manchester United was about to face Chelsea at Old Trafford. This game obviously attracted a lot of attention again.

On January 27, a bus carrying Chelsea players drove into Manchester and entered Old Trafford, followed by an influx of media reporters.

In comparison, this game should have received more attention because it is the second round of the League Cup semi-finals, and this game will also determine who between Manchester United and Chelsea will enter the final, but in fact, the attention this game received is obviously far less than the last time they met at Stamford Bridge.

Apart from some media from England, there are few media from other European countries. This may be more because they don't think Manchester United will beat Chelsea. Also, at this time, other national leagues are also on a tight schedule, so they will pay more attention to the games of their own top teams.

The actual situation was the same as the media analysis before the game. Manchester United did not explode and the game ended with a 1:0. Chelsea got the ticket to the League Cup final with a score of 3:0 in two rounds.

In fact, Sir Ferguson has been studying ways to counter Chelsea's tactics these days. Finally, he decided to implement strict blockades on the two flanks and the penalty area, and relax the defense in front of the penalty area. In this way, even if Wang Li wants to shoot in front of the penalty area, he can only look for opportunities without a shooting angle. Robben and Duff on the two flanks will be much more passive. They are not at Wang Li's level. Facing the close defense of Manchester United's defenders, it is difficult for them to cooperate with Wang Li in long passes.

This also hindered Chelsea's attack.

However, this kind of defense is of little help to Manchester United's offense. Since too many troops are invested in defense, their performance in offense is still very sluggish. Although old Ferguson strongly requires the frontcourt players to cooperate more and launch fast breaks in offense, Manchester United's current forwards do not have the strength of Wang Li, and they cannot meet such high requirements in terms of personal skills or physical fitness.

Perhaps, there is good news for Manchester United during this period. Their Dutch center forward Van Nistelrooy has finally recovered from his injury. This is undoubtedly great news for Manchester United, which can only use the "glass man" Saha as a single center forward.

But unfortunately, facing the strong Chelsea, Van Nistelrooy was not in good shape. Maybe the super striker had some psychological shadow on Wang Li. Anyway, his performance in defense was really bad, and in offense, he performed much worse than before. This made Sir Alex Ferguson replace him with Saha in the 40th minute of the first half. Obviously, the old Sir could no longer tolerate Van Nistelrooy's performance.

However, the focus of many English media was not the result of the game, because Manchester United's loss was not unexpected to most people. They focused more on Manchester United's defense.

This season, it was the first time that Chelsea scored only one goal in a game, which clearly showed the success of Manchester United in defense. After the game, the full video of the game was welcomed by the coaches of all Premier League teams and all European teams who were paying attention to Chelsea. They needed to watch the full video of the game carefully to understand how Manchester United defended Chelsea's attack and how to limit Wang Li's performance.

After the game, The Guardian praised Manchester United's defense. They said: "Manchester United's defense has given more teams hope of beating Chelsea. Their approach will be a great reference for teams facing Chelsea in the future."

The Sun was worried about Chelsea because they felt that before the start of the Champions League, Chelsea played such a game, which would allow other European teams to discover Chelsea's "weaknesses", which would be disadvantageous for Chelsea in the European Cup. They hoped that Chelsea would perform as strongly in the European war as in the league. The English team needed a European Champions League too much, because only in this way could it reflect the style of "Europe's No. 1 League".

Although the media's comments on this game were boiling, Chelsea coach Mourinho showed no concern. In an interview, he said: "If every team defends like Manchester United, then we don't have to worry about defense at all, because the team doesn't have to worry about defense at all. You also saw that Manchester United was unable to attack in the game."

Although the Portuguese showed great confidence, he was actually a little worried about the team's offense, because Manchester United did defend well, and their blocking on both flanks almost brought Chelsea's flank offense to a standstill. In the current Chelsea team, the combination of Robben and Duff is undoubtedly an important weight for the team's offense. How to resist the opponent's full-court close defense has become Mourinho's current worry.

But at least now, Mourinho has no time to think so much. On January 30, the third day after Chelsea's battle with Manchester United, they will face the Premier League powerhouse Birmingham in the round of 32 of the Football Cup.