Chapter 114: Two Killers
Seeing Fan Zhiyi, Chen Lin unconsciously showed a smile on his face, for Chinese, the four joys of life "meeting the old people in other places" are comparable to "gold list titles" and "cave house flower candles". Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info
Although Fan Zhiyi insisted on leaving Prato at the beginning of the season, which seemed a little ungrateful, Chen Lin never took it to heart. He always remembers his original intention of buying the Prato club, so as long as Fan Zhiyi can have a better future, he will be happy.
This season, Fan Zhiyi has successfully established himself in the Crystal Palace team. After two years of training in the Italian league, Fan Zhiyi is stronger than the same period in history, and his excellent physical fitness and Italian defensive skills have made Fan Zhiyi the core of the Crystal Palace team's defense. With his excellent performance, Crystal Palace, which was originally relegated to the first division this season, is now ranked 16th in the league and has a great hope of relegation.
As the first Chinese to land in the Premier League, Fan Zhiyi has already made a name for himself in the south London area where Crystal Palace is located, and he even has his own fan base among the locals.
It is precisely because of the smooth career that Fan Zhiyi saw that his former boss, coach and teammates were extremely enthusiastic. Since the next day of the game, the two sides had dinner in the hotel restaurant, but Fan Zhiyi said that the whole Prato team must be feasted after the next day's game.
The two sides had a very happy chat that night, and the scouts sent by Prato to London to collect information in advance were helped by Fan Zhiyi. As the sworn enemy of the Arsenal team in history, Crystal Palace naturally knows a lot about Arsenal, and Fan Zhiyi has played against Arsenal three times this season plus the League Cup, so he is very familiar with them.
Although many of these have been reflected in the scout's report, Chen Lin and Spalletti still listened to Fan Zhiyi's advice in detail.
In general, the current Arsenal is a typical English team, paying attention to physical confrontation, advocating strength, with abundant physical fitness, tactical play based on traditional long passes, and they occupy a larger defensive area and high-altitude advantage in terms of defense. Under the command of manager Graham, this Arsenal team has a tough style and a strong style of play.
However, the only good news is that Arsenal manager Graham has recently been embroiled in a "transfer bribery" scandal, with a journalist revealing that Graham had twice accepted bribes totalling £250,000 from Swedish agent Hauge at the start of the season, and then brought in two parallel players from the other side. Now that the Premier League is at a critical juncture to rebuild its brand image, hearing such a scandal is naturally to be pursued harshly. Historically, Graham was terminated from his contract by Arsenal because of this incident and was banned by the FA for one year.
When it comes to this, we have to talk about the difference between the English manager and the Italian manager. Unlike the Italian league manager, who is only responsible for the competition, the England manager is more akin to the general manager of the team, responsible for everything in the team, including transfers, business openings and so on. Doing so ensures that the team is built to the best of the manager's requirements, but it is also easy for someone like Graham to take advantage of the team.
The next day, Highbury Stadium in north London was filled with 38,000 seats. Before the Prato players even entered the stadium, they heard the "boo" of the whole stadium, and all kinds of insults with a London accent fluttered in the sky, trying to interfere with the state of the visiting players in every way. This is one of the unique atmospheres of England's stadiums, considering that London is the birthplace of football hooligans.
Despite the painful London police imposing extremely strict quarantine and restrictions on registered football hooligans; At the same time, they targeted the British fans who watched the game, and they were almost strict about the qualifications, but the overall atmosphere was such that they were sometimes helpless.
In this game, Prato still used the same three-back lineup from the previous game. It is dominated by traditional Italian defensive counter-attacking tactics. Against the Arsenal team, Spalletti is very jealous, and the away games are still dominated by fewer goals.
However, his opponents did not think so, and the arrogant Graham clearly did not have an Italian second division team in mind.
This season for Arsenal can be described as stormy, at the beginning of the season, the team's main striker, England international Paul. Merson has been embroiled in a drug scandal, banned for six months, and only recently regained his chance to play, while he himself has been embroiled in a bribery scandal. As a result, the team's record has deteriorated, and at this time it has ranked 12th in the league, and has been eliminated in the League Cup and FA Cup, and is almost destined to miss the three major European cups next season. The only thing that can save him now is the Cup Winners' Cup, and he desperately needs a big win to secure his position and reunite the team's already broken hearts.
It seemed to Graham that the Lord had heard his prayer and sent a team like Prato to him. Is there anything more perfect than a game that can be a weighty game and an easy win for the current Arsenal team?
Graham has not wondered why Prato has been able to beat other countries' cup champions all the way to the quarter-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup. But in his opinion, whether it is Dinamo Zagreb or Spartak Moscow, they are small clubs of the Warsaw Pact, and at this time Western Europeans are extremely disdainful of poor and backward Eastern European teams. Prato has only gotten to where he is today thanks to Dunga and a few villains picked up at the World Cup, and Graham has a way to get to a team that relies on a few star players.
With this in mind, Arsenal launched an onslaught on Prato from the start. Heidel, Hartson, Paul. The midfielders of the England national team composed of Merson and McMahon frequently created killing opportunities, giving Ian Brown on the front line. Wright and Alain. Smith delivered quite a few shells.
Ian. Wright was arguably a late bloomer, and since no team was willing to give him a professional contract, he even became a full-time mason for a while. It wasn't until he was 22 years old that he was spotted by Crystal Palace scouts and brought to Selhurst Park. There he became one of the greatest goalscorers in Palace history and was named one of the 11 all-time Palace players and the title of 'Player of the Century'. In 1991, he moved to Arsenal for the highest £2.5 million in the club's history, and this time the Arsenal made another unusually good deal, and that season, Ian Wright was undisputed top scorer with a whopping 31 goals. Last year, it was with the help of Ian . Wright's brilliant play allowed Arsenal to reach the Cup Winners' Cup final.
Historically, Ian. Wright scored 185 goals in 279 appearances for Arsenal and eventually became a member of the British Hall of Famer.
And Ian. Wright's partner Alain. Smith has also been outstanding, having been named one of Arsenal's top 50 stars in Arsenal history alongside Wright. With a height of 191cm, he is Ian. Wright was the top scorer in the league that season before he came, so Arsenal actually had two top scorers in the league at this time, which shows the fierceness of the firepower. This is also a source of confidence for Graham, who were unable to stop Alain in last year's Cup Winners' Cup final. Smith's left-footed stunner, can Prato stop those two goal machines?