Chapter 537: Leading the way

Genius one second to remember the address of this site: (vertex Chinese)., the fastest update! No ads!

In many well-established sports circles, there is a tradition of retired celebrities returning to their old clubs, and European football is one of the most common areas where this situation occurs.

Among them, Real Madrid is one of the clubs that is most keen to "recycle" their own retired stars, and the previous Hierro, Solari, Zidane, Guti, Raul, Alonso...... They have been or are continuing to shine for their old clubs in the construction of various echelons or management positions.

The troika management system of honorary chairman Beckenbauer, chairman Hoeness, and CEO Rummenigge continued from the end of the last century until the football emperor completely faded out of the football circle, and most of their head coaches from the first team to the U17 youth team are also their own family members who have played for the team, so it can be said that this club has a firm Bayern blood from top to bottom.

Of course, we can't leave out the Rossoneri after "Brother Lee" was ousted, Maldini Jr., Leonardo, Kaka, Fiori and other former AC Milan celebrities have joined the management and coaching staff, looking at it, it is all memories!

This tradition is also popular in the Premier League, where the likes of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer have all returned to their parent clubs after retiring (Chelsea can also be called Frank Lampard's parent club to some extent) to gain experience in youth teams and lay a good foundation for coaching other teams.

However, Arsenal's work in this regard is somewhat unsatisfactory, and the team's former legends Tony Adams, David Seaman, Bergkamp and others have not stayed in the team after retiring, and even have almost no connection with Arsenal, which is not the attitude that a world giant should show.

After retiring in 2014, Thierry briefly coached the Gunners' youth team, but had no choice but to leave A.T. Kearney again because the professor didn't like him and was also a guest commentator on Sky Sports.

However, this somewhat chilling behaviour took a turn for the better in 2016, when Swede Ljungberg returned to Arsenal to take on the role of head coach of the Under-15s and Under-19s, and then German defender Mertesacker took over as Gunners' head of youth after retiring in 2018.

This summer, when Li Mudi took over the Arsenal coach, he also put a certain amount of thought into this. The return of goalkeeper coach Tony Roberts from his time as a professor and the departure of his fitness coach since Unai Emery's arrival, Tony Colbert, and now the recall of the King of Highbury, have been instrumental in enhancing the club's brand image and rallying the loyalty of fans.

Ten days passed quickly, and on 18 November, the tired internationals returned to the club and immediately threw themselves into training for the weekend of league games.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, on the other hand, has embarked on a period of hell as he has to take on an hour and a half of "extra meals" after a day of group practice, which is not very easy, to train himself on how he can stop spitting out the bread that is brought to his mouth.

Fortunately, standing in front of Mei Yangyang is one of his idols, Henry, which makes the former feel all kinds of pain in his body, but also slightly reduce some psychological burden.

After handing over this big problem to his new colleagues, Li Mudi temporarily entered the role of the shopkeeper again, because his workload is really not light. Not only did he have to formulate a tactical strategy for the next game, but he also had to be distracted to the winter transfer window that was about to open in a month and a half, so that he couldn't spare time to spend time with his wife, especially the little princess, for a short period of time after that. This made the Gunners manager extremely unhappy, so he always appeared on the training ground and off the pitch with a black face, making the players Alexander.

On Sunday 22, Arsenal host Newcastle United, who have been in the middle of the table since returning to the Premier League under the leadership of Rafael Benitez, and have occasionally challenged for a European spot. It's a pity that due to the stable state of several giant teams, coupled with the gap in financial resources, this magpie has not been able to make much breakthrough in results. But no matter which strong team encounters them, they will also feel a headache, and if they are not careful, they may be bitten by the sharp beak, which is a very painful experience.

In terms of the total value of the first team provided by professional websites, the Gunners crushed the Magpies worth only 27.5 billion euros with 700 million euros, but this does not mean that the performance of the two sides on the field will show such a big contrast. On the one hand, because the value does not represent too many things, and more importantly, the head coach of the latter is the super tactician who is famous in world football!

While his performances at the helm of big clubs such as Inter, Chelsea and Real Madrid have always been a big disappointment, he has often been able to spark when he becomes the manager of a second-tier team. Valencia in 2001/04 and Liverpool in 2004/09 (the Reds were so downtrodden that most people didn't recognise their status as giants) were some of the highlights of Benitez's managerial career.

And the subsequent Neapolitan era, although slightly inferior, is not lacking in good points. As for Newcastle, which is now coaching, it can still force a bloody way out in the fierce competition in the Premier League, and this ability is absolutely unquestionable.

It's just that trapped by the club's business philosophy and financial situation, Bei Shuai has a stomach full of talent, but there are no best players to execute, and he can't catch it. Although Newcastle, who were playing away, used very targeted tactics to limit the home team's attacking position in the early stages of the first half, they were also unable to put pressure on Arsenal's backline due to their own bus strategy, so they were still in a passive situation overall.

Of course, if they can maintain this form all the time, or wait for the opponent to make a mistake in their rush to win, or leave the Emirates Stadium with a score of 0-0, this is an outcome that the visitors can accept or expect.

However, substitute Welbeck's goal in the 68th minute of the second half completely ruined Benitez's plan, forcing him to step up the attack in the following period, and the game began to move towards suspense from this moment on.

In the end, relying on sharp counter-attacking tactics, Arsenal scored a goal each by Alexandre Lacazette and academy youngster Les Nelson, and won this seemingly easy, but in fact very dangerous game with a score of 3-0.

With this three points, Arsenal also won 12 and drew one in the first 13 rounds of the Premier League this season, which is still the same as the best start record when Manchester City set a record of 100 points to win the title three years ago. It's just that in terms of scoring and conceding goals, Li Mudi's team is still a lot of distance from the original blue moon, but this is also a historical achievement.

However, the only frustration for Gunners fans is that, unlike Manchester City's unstoppable momentum early on, this year's Arsenal have a reaper behind them - the team of three-time champions Pep Guardiola.

After beating Wolves away, the Blues continued to peep behind the Gunners by four points, ready to bare their ferocious fangs to strike a fatal blow at the league leaders. Behind them are the in-form Tottenham Hotspur, with Mauricio Pochettino's side currently sitting third in the table with 10 wins, one draw and two defeats.

However, in the eyes of the outside world, the new Premier League champions born in May next year will basically be produced among the above three teams. Although Liverpool has shown signs of rebounding in recent times, due to its poor performance at the beginning of the season, it has been opened by Arsenal by 10 points gap, and there is really little hope of completing the counterattack.

As for Chelsea, which has been up and down, and Manchester United, which has just changed its manager and needs a period of adjustment and running-in, they were excluded from the championship competition half a month ago.

Li Muddy is not too fond of this situation, but he is not very disgusted, because without the constraints of other powers, Manchester City is bound to get an amazing record in the end, which requires Arsenal to create a result that is close to or even surpasses the original historical record, and the difficulty is needless to say.

But this is not all negative factors for the sought-after, as long as you can play a relatively good performance in these so-called strong dialogues, then with your own "little prince of abuse" attributes, it is almost impossible to plant a head on those opponents who must get points, as long as Manchester City has the slightest negligence, then the chances of winning the league title are still quite large.

Of course, Arsenal will have to do their best to deal with the opposition whether they are strong or weak, and only by giving their all in every game before the victory is assured will it be possible to win the honour that has been held for 17 years without being widely favoured by the outside world.

On Wednesday 25 November, the Premier League ushered in a two-game fixture schedule, and the Gunners will face a Burnley side who look average but always surprise everyone. Although the latter's meritorious coach Sean Dycher (translated by Zhan Jun as Sean Dycher) was poached by the generous Wolves last summer, this team, which has no superstars but a very average team of players, was still able to declare relegation early last season and finally finished twelfth in the league, which is a relatively ideal result, and their current manager, Frenchman Claude Puel, is still worthy of recognition.

Although Burnley are now playing in a 4-4-1-1 formation due to their overall ability, Puel is an attacking coach who often instructs the two wing-backs on the spot to change their team's stance to 4-2-3-1 to increase their attacking power up front.

However, these routines of his have been well known to the outside world when he coached Leicester City a few years ago, so under the prepared response of Li Mudi, the home team did not take advantage of this duel, and finally formed a scene of siege by the Gunners.

In this case, the weakness of Li Mudi's lack of a center forward who can act as a bridgehead in the opponent's penalty area is more obvious, Aubameyang's pock-like stature obviously can't do anything in a group of tower-like defenders, Welbeck and Lacazette are slightly better than the American sheep, but they are not the type like Giroud and Ruud van Nistelrooy, so when facing the bucket formation, Arsenal will generally play harder.

Fortunately, the set-piece tactics that had been practised in daily training came into play at this crucial moment, and Greek centre-back Papastathopoulos, who had rarely qualified to start, took advantage of the chaos caused by a corner kick and volleyed the ball into the home goal.

It's just that in the process of celebrating, he not only received a yellow card warning from the referee for taking off his jersey, but also said some complaints to the camera on the sidelines that the team did not give him a chance to play, which still caused a big storm after the game. At that time, there was a camera next to the coach's bench that directly gave a close-up of the Arsenal coach standing outside the sideline, but Li Mudi obtained the true biography of facial expression management from his wife, and his face did not show any negative emotions at the time, which made the broadcast media regret missing a topic that could be hyped.

As for the reason for the substitution of the scorer less than five minutes after the score was rewritten, it was also explained by Li Mudi in the post-match press conference as a precautionary measure to avoid the Greek central defender receiving a second yellow card, which can be regarded as a dripping deal with the incident.

Under the attention of the outside world, Papastathopoulos was not punished too harshly by the club for the impulse of this game, he was only fined 10,000 pounds within the team, and he was still able to appear in the squad and even the starting lineup as planned in the next series of games, so it was considered that the conflict at that time was completely over.

But who knew that shortly after the winter transfer window opened, the 32-year-old veteran suddenly became a member of Arsenal's departure team in 2021, and it was only then that people recalled how tough the Celestial manager's wrists were, and he was not a good old man.

But that's all for later, let's bring the conversation back to the fourteenth round of Premier League fixtures between Burnley and Arsenal.

The castle, which had been held for more than an hour, was eventually breached by their opponents, which greatly affected the morale and confidence of the home team's players, and the Gunners seized the opportunity to score another goal through Alexandre Lacazette to seal the victory.

2-0, after the draw with Manchester United, Li Mudi led the team to a wave of four consecutive wins, and the good form is amazing.

However, even more exciting news came two and a half hours later, when Manchester City's home defeat to Tottenham extended the Gunners' lead to six points (40 points, 34 points, 33 points), which was the perfect Thanksgiving gift!