Chapter 357 Three League Matches in February

In February, Chelsea has a total of six games to play. In addition to three league games, there are one each in the FA Cup, League Cup and Champions League. For Chelsea, except for the league games, the other three games are all related to the championship trophy, which can be said to be very important. Among them, the League Cup match against Liverpool is the League Cup final. This game will directly determine the ownership of the League Cup championship. Therefore, for Chelsea, which has not won the championship for a long time, the games in February are extremely important.

February 3rd soon arrived. It was the 25th round of the Premier League, and Chelsea challenged Blackburn away.

This season, Blackburn's performance was somewhat disappointing at the beginning of the season, but as the league progressed, their results gradually improved. After getting rid of the relegation quagmire, they even rose slightly. Now they are ranked 13th in the league. A team in this position has no relegation crisis and no qualification for European competitions. Therefore, for Blackburn, winning or losing in the current league does not matter at all.

The same is true for Chelsea. Arsenal, which is in second place, is now 20 points behind Chelsea. In this case, the league title is basically in hand, and the players are also focusing on other competitions, so they don’t take the league seriously. The battle between the two teams under such conditions cannot really arouse the excitement of the media, because they know that the game will definitely not be too intense.

In this game, Wang Li was not included in the starting lineup. In fact, the current Premier League has been regarded as a training ground by Mourinho. If possible, he would even choose to give up some games and shift his focus to other events. Therefore, Chelsea used more than half of the substitute lineup. Many rookies, substitutes and other players who usually have difficulty on the field got opportunities, such as Geremi, Glen Johnson and Oliveira. Wayne Bridge, who had just been freed from injury, was also sent on the field by Mourinho, which made him feel very excited.

Unlike Chelsea, Blackburn Rovers fielded their entire main lineup. In fact, the team had already been eliminated in other competitions, so they did not need to worry about issues such as physical fitness. A week of league play would not cause too many injury problems, even though it is still winter when injuries are frequent.

Under such circumstances, Chelsea did not play smoothly. In the absence of Wang Li, Blackburn actually fought against Chelsea at home.

At the beginning of the first half, Blackburn midfielder Jonathan Douglas scored the first goal for the team. Just 20 minutes later, Scott Parker, who started the game, equalized the score for Chelsea with a header.

The game then fell into a tense state until the 73rd minute when Chelsea took advantage of a penalty kick and Lampard scored the goal for the team. This was also the last goal of the game and the game ended in a peaceful situation.

………After returning to London from Spain, in addition to the necessary daily training, Wang Li accompanied Angela every day. The relationship between the two of them was very close and their feelings were extremely warm. Wang Li even considered whether he should prepare for marriage.

Before, he felt incredible about this topic, and perhaps avoided talking about it, but now, he has been thinking about it.

As a princess of the English royal family, even though the royal family is now more of a symbol, getting married is by no means a simple matter. Whenever the two talked about this topic, Wang Li still felt a little headache. After dating for so long, he had not even met Duke Edward, which made him feel very guilty.

But fortunately, at least he doesn't have to worry about this matter recently, because Angela is going to study in the United States.

Wang Li in his villa near Stamford Bridge.

"Annie, are you done packing?" Wang Li half-knelt beside a trolley case, carefully folded the clothes and put them into the case, then turned around and asked.

Angela wore a tight black fleece coat and held a comb in her hand. She came over with a smile and lay down behind Wang Li. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him and said, "Everything is ready. Uncle Cole's car is outside. We should hurry."

"Okay, okay, I think it will waste more time if you don't let go."

Angela burst into laughter, turned around and kissed Wang Li on the face, and said, "You will miss me, right?!"

"kindness."

"I believe it." Angela said with a smile, loosening her arms around Wang Li, half sitting on the edge of the bed, picking up a few pieces of clothes on her shoulders, stuffing them into the suitcase, and then zipping it up, saying, "That's it, there's no point in folding them so neatly, we'll have to wash them later anyway."

Wang Li smiled, spread his hands helplessly, and said: "You are always like this."

"Why? You dislike me?"

Wang Li said nothing. He put his arm around Angela's shoulders and kissed her hard. After Angela's face flushed, he said, "I will go to the United States to see you when I have time."

Angela stared at Wang Li's face and said gently, "I'll wait for you."

On the evening of February 6, a passenger plane bound for Los Angeles took off from London International Airport... After seeing Angela off, Wang Li's mind returned to the team's game.

Perhaps this year is an unusual year for Chelsea and its fans, because they are likely to win many championships that they never dared to dream of before. The same is true for Wang Li this year, because he had never won any championship trophies before. As a football player, honor is even more important than money.

So, besides training at the club, Wang Li used his free time to watch some game videos. In fact, he seldom watched these things before, which also shows from another perspective how much he values ​​the upcoming game.

The focus is of course Barcelona.

As for the games in February, although the League Cup final is the most important, the away game to Spain to challenge Barcelona is definitely the top priority, because it is related to their mentality in the second round of games in March. If they can draw or win in Barcelona, ​​Chelsea's qualifying situation will obviously be much stronger, but if they lose, it will become difficult to win.

Wang Li is no stranger to the Liverpool team. He does not think that the team consisting almost of Gerrard alone can beat Chelsea, so he does not take this game too seriously. In his opinion, after defeating Manchester United, the League Cup trophy is already in their hands.

As for the league?

Wang Li is just coping now, because he himself doesn't know whether head coach Mourinho will send him to play in the next two league games.

On February 8, Chelsea faced Manchester City at home.

In this game, Wang Li watched the whole game on the sidelines as a substitute player. Even when the team was in a stalemate, Mourinho did not send him on the field. In the end, Chelsea drew 0-0 with Manchester City at home. This was also the first draw Chelsea has encountered since the start of this season.

As the team that ended Chelsea's winning streak, Manchester City was obviously very excited. Even though this "end" was a bit unrealistic, they were inexplicably happy. After all, even many top teams couldn't do this.

In the press conference after the game, Manchester City coach Keegan became the protagonist. Many media reporters were interested in his mood at the time, but the former World Footballer of the Year and legendary star of English football seemed to be in low spirits. He just said lightly: "It's nothing. Chelsea is a strong team. They have already won the league championship. So in this game, they didn't send out the main lineup at all, and Alan Wang didn't play."

"A draw like this doesn't mean much. It doesn't show how strong we are. It's just that we were a little luckier. If we had met Chelsea in the previous rounds, I'm sure we would have been the losers."

Keegan's low-key remarks made the media reporters who wanted to get big news extremely dissatisfied. Since the beginning of this season, almost all reporters have been expecting a team to end Chelsea's winning streak, but when it really ended, the protagonists were not interested and even threw out the argument of "we are just lucky". This extreme contrast between the before and after really made these people feel very depressed.

However, this won Mourinho's favor. When a reporter asked him about his opinion of the game, the Portuguese rarely complimented his opponent: "Manchester City's performance was much better than last time. Although I did not send out a full set of main lineup, the performance of the players on the field was not bad. The result has already said it all. Manchester City's current results are closely related to their strength."

In fact, Manchester City's performance this season is indeed very good. They are now ranked 8th in the league and have a good chance of competing for a spot in next season's League Cup. In this case, getting an unexpectedly extra point at Stamford Bridge will be of great help to Manchester City, because almost all teams that come to Stamford Bridge cannot get any points at all.

After the game, Wang Li returned to his life of going back and forth between the club and his residence. He has been like this recently since Angela left. This may seem incomprehensible to others, but Wang Li, who has lived three lives, enjoys this ordinary life.

In fact, although he has not participated in the league these days, he is not doing nothing. He has been working hard on his free kick ability recently.

Because the team had been training the 'zone attack tactics' in the afternoons a while ago, and Angela came back from the United States to accompany him, Wang Li's free kicks had not made much progress for a long time, so now that he had time to practice, he almost seized every opportunity to train his free kick skills.

Wang Li still has a big advantage in free kicks, especially in terms of strength, which is very important. For a simple shot, strength is very important. For example, for a free kick from 30 meters away, when ordinary players kick the ball, the flying speed of the football has already slowed down. Such a ball will not pose any threat even if the angle is tricky. But Wang Li is different. At least for shots within 40 meters, he can exert good strength to ensure that the flying speed of the football is fast enough. In other words, he only needs to train the angle.

Although it sounds easy, but from a distance of 30 meters, if you want to kick the ball around the wall and fly at a good angle, the football needs to draw a beautiful arc in the air, which is extremely difficult to control.

However, Wang Li has always believed that as long as he works hard, he will succeed. So in addition to daily training, he also practices free kicks for 2 hours every day to ensure that he is always in a state of being able to take free kicks and to slowly improve his free kick skills.

In this kind of life, a lot of time has come to February 12, when Chelsea went to Liverpool to challenge Everton away.

Speaking of dark horses, the dark horses of this season's Premier League are undoubtedly Everton and Middlesbrough. These two teams were not favored before the game, but their results are indeed outstanding. Everton has now secured the qualification to participate in the UEFA Cup and even has the hope of competing for a place in next season's Champions League.

As an ambitious head coach, Moyes' goal for Everton is to retain its place in the UEFA Cup and compete for qualification for the Champions League, so every point in the league is very important to Everton.

Although Chelsea is very strong, Moyes knows that Mourinho will never send out all the main players in the league, so he feels the team still has hope of winning.

Unfortunately, he was deeply disappointed with the lineup that Chelsea fielded. Among the 11 starting players, 10 were absolute main players of the team, and the only position worthy of controversy was the goalkeeper - even though he was not a main player, Thomas Clarke's strength was unquestionable.

In fact, Mourinho did not attach much importance to the result of this game. He just wanted the team's main players not to forget the feeling of playing football, so he let them play. Among them, Wang Li was the worst affected. Mourinho was afraid that he would not play in two games and could not find the feeling of playing football, which would be a loss.

However, what Mourinho did not expect was that Moyes had already resorted to "any means necessary" to gain league points.

Wang Li, who had not played for more than 10 days, was very active in the game. Just 7 minutes into the game, he used his personal ability to dribble past three Everton defenders and created a one-on-one opportunity. He then made a casual lob shot to score the first goal for Chelsea, allowing all Chelsea supporters to see that Wang Li's condition had not declined due to not playing, which made everyone breathe a sigh of relief.

However, as the game progressed, Everton players' movements became more and more violent, and the game was at a standstill. When it was almost halftime, the game almost turned into a hand-to-hand fight.

At this time, referee Riley became the busiest person in the field, running back and forth, with his whistle ticking non-stop, and Chelsea could no longer launch any decent attack. It was obvious that Everton wanted to use this tactic to disrupt Chelsea's attack, so that in the chaos, they could possibly win a point or even win.

Moyes knows very well that Chelsea, who aim to win the 'quadruple crown', simply cannot afford it!!!

In fact, it was the same. Faced with this situation, Mourinho immediately replaced the injury-prone Arkin Robben and Scott Parker, and ordered the players to shrink the defense line to reduce the opponent's chances of fouls, and kept nagging the fourth official, saying "they have no sportsmanship", "this kind of game will cause more players to get injured", etc. Unfortunately, everyone knows that the fourth official is the "punching bag" sent by the FA, and it is normal for him to just nod and do nothing. In fact, even if he wants to do something, he does not have the right to do so.

As a result, the game was in a stalemate for a while, but at the beginning of the second half, Chelsea got a free kick in a good position due to a foul by Everton defender. Wang Li scored the goal himself and changed the score to 2:0. This goal also made Everton coach Moyes a little desperate. Although he knew from the beginning that even with a foul tactic, the chances of winning were not great, but when he really faced the result, he looked at the black-haired boy who scored another goal, and still felt a sense of powerlessness from the bottom of his heart.

It’s not that we don’t work hard, it’s just that the gap is too big!!

In the end, Chelsea defeated Everton 0:3 away with Lampard's last-minute header. After the game, Mourinho did not shake hands with Moyes at all, but walked away angrily.

The Portuguese's behavior obviously made Moyes lose face and he became extremely dissatisfied. In the post-match press conference, he kept emphasizing that Mourinho was "uncultured", "rude and reckless", etc.

However, Mourinho's dissatisfaction is obviously justified. The headline of London's Evening Standard is "Mourinho's Gladiators Repel Dirty Local Snakes". Mourinho said: "It's true that we haven't won the championship yet, but we have shown that we have the strength to win the championship. Last night we proved that we have the ability to meet the challenges of the future. We showed our team spirit, tenacious defense and united fighting spirit."

Mourinho was extremely dissatisfied with Blackburn's rough foul tactics. "I hate this kind of game. The opponent is always looking for opportunities to injure our players. I was worried about this yesterday. Fortunately, they didn't succeed. They felt that they couldn't beat us in football, so they used other methods to attack us, even using brutal actions to try to force our players to give up. Their midfielder (Gilbani) committed at least 20 fouls, but he didn't get a yellow card. It's hard to control your emotions."

Mourinho sneered at Moyes' accusation that he did not shake hands after the game, saying: "I had shaken hands with him several times before the game, so I went back to the locker room with the players. His statement was ridiculous. The game is over, I am very happy and hope to be with my players. I don't want to be with others. If I saw Moyes when I left, I would shake hands."

(To be continued)