A week later. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

In the same week, Aston Villa won back-to-back league victories against Preston North End and Wolves. The two teams are currently 19th and 11th respectively, which are not difficult opponents for Villa, and Wang Shuai has once again moved tactical training to the field, and the training target is a six-man attacking tactical umbrella.

After nearly two months of competition, Wang Shuai deeply understands that with Villa's current strength, winning this year's Championship is not a problem, and his eyes should be more on the competition for the League Cup and FA Cup.

Aston Villa's League Cup third round opponents are Blackburn Rovers, and like Leeds United in the previous round of the League Cup, they are teams in the middle and lower reaches of the Championship, and Villa will not have to work too hard to win the game.

However, Wang is concerned about the next four and fifth rounds of the League Cup, as well as the FA Cup in January. With each round of these two cup competitions decided by draw, this means that Aston Villa could face a Premier League side at any time. After playing against Newcastle, Wang Shuai also has a general understanding of the strength of the Premier League team, at least it will not be worse than Newcastle, that is to say, the Premier League team basically has more than three senior professional players, and even those top teams, such as Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, it is not impossible for the whole team to be senior professional players plus one or two master players, just like Barcelona I met before.

And in the face of an opponent of this level, in addition to taking advantage of tactics, Wang Shuai can't think of any other way. Fortunately, the fourth round of the League Cup is at the end of November, and Wang Shuai still has a month to go, although this time is also relatively urgent, but Wang Shuai is sure that the team will understand another tactic. And if Aston Villa's luck is good enough to meet a Premier League team in the next few rounds of cup competitions, Wang Shuai is even sure that the players will be proficient in one or even two more tactics. At that time, Wang Shuai also had enough confidence to touch the Premier League team.

It's just that these are still early, and Wang Shuai's priority now is to make the team proficient in the umbrella formation. After formulating a tactical training plan at the beginning of the season, Wang Shuai ranked the importance of several of his current micro-tactics. The first thing to bear the brunt of is the ball-possession tactic of the arc formation, because only by controlling the ball can we grasp the initiative of the game, not to mention that this formation is very consistent with Aston Villa's short-pass penetration tactics and Wang Shuai's consistent ball-control tactical concept.

The second is the umbrella formation, after all, no matter how good the ball is, it is useless to have no kick. Then there is the counterattack tactics of the front and arrow formation, this formation can be said to be Wang Shuai's tactics specially prepared for the strong team, because in the face of a strong team, the first thing to do is to ensure that the city gate is not lost, which makes the team spend most of the time in defense, so if you want to score, a defensive counterattack tactic is necessary.

……

On October 26, in the third round of the League Cup, Aston Villa played Leeds United.

On October 29, in the thirteenth round of the Championship, Villa's opponent was Reading.

Neither of these games was against a strong team, with Aston Villa using the first half as usual for tactical training before starting to play in earnest in the second half, but despite this, Villa managed to secure two comfortable victories and continue to dominate the league table while progressing to the fourth round of the Carabao Cup.

After the thirteenth round of the league, except for Aston Villa in the first place and Rotherham in the bottom place, the other positions have changed a lot.

First of all, Barnsley, after the previous battle with Villa, the rest of the teams seem to have found a way to restrain Barnsley, which is to constantly attack their defence. As a result, Barnsley lost back-to-back games after the game against Villa, conceding 2.2 goals per game to rank second in the league, only slightly better than Rotherham at the bottom of the table. Barnsley, who has now lost six in a row, has also fallen to 16th in the rankings, and it can be said that he has lost the hope of competing for the title or even advancing directly.

The second is those teams that have had lineup changes in the summer, and after more than ten rounds of league games, their lineups have almost run in and began to play their due strength. Derby County are out of relegation after five games unbeaten, with Sheffield Wednesday and Queens Park Rangers squeezing into the top 10 of the table, while Brighton have also moved up to fourth place without five games.

Compared to these teams, the teams that were previously at the top of the table have not changed much. With Barnsley struggling to keep up, Newcastle are back in second place, with Norwich in third place with the same points, and the two teams have also surpassed Barnsley in second and third place in the scoring charts. Huddersfield, who brought in a large number of signings before the season, also continued to maintain the promotion zone with good performances and are currently in fifth place.

It's just that with the exception of Aston Villa, the rest of the teams, especially those at the top of the table, have not won all of them in recent rounds. As a result, Villa have a growing advantage in points, now nine points ahead of second-placed Newcastle United, while also leading by far in goal difference.

But just when Wang Shuai and Villa thought that the league championship was worry-free and they could focus all the team's focus on the League Cup and FA Cup, an accident happened. On the third day after the end of the thirteenth round of the league, Greenhouse and Herman were both injured in training.

Greenhouse's injury is fine, but he sprained his left foot and can return to the field after less than half a month of recuperation. But Herman was not so lucky, he suffered a torn Achilles tendon, and it could be said that he would not be able to play for the rest of the winter, and even if the follow-up treatment was not satisfactory, the season could be reimbursed.

Herman's situation is a headache for Wang Shuai, because the team's current tactics are all trained according to the configuration of two strikers. Now Herman can't play, and there is no player who replaces Herman as the starting striker in the substitute striker, and the only player who can come off the bench without reducing the strength of the team is Zhou Aniu, and Wang Shuai had to change the starting formation to 4-5-1. But in this way, the arc formation that was trained before and the umbrella formation that is being trained now are both two-forward tactics, and they must be invalidated, and the team's tactical training must be restarted.

Fortunately, the five-man formation is only different from the previously trained six-man formation in the forward position, and it is not too difficult to retrain. It's just that the team's current formation has become 4-5-1, which means that the focus of the game is also biased towards defense, and Wang Shuai can only put the training of the forward formation on the agenda in advance.

But in this way, the team now has three tactics to train at the same time, and after the injuries of Greenhouse and Herman, Wang Shuai did not dare to overtrain the players, and time suddenly became tight.