Chapter 60: The Fire Is Great
"Did you hear that?" Descartes walked up and down the dressing room, giving his speech like a general: "The voices outside, the people, they all look down on us, they think we will lose, they think we have come to Stamford Bridge to surrender!" ”
"Guys, you see, we've talked so much about morale that we don't want to hear it, but listen, the people out there are cheering, cheering for the team's victory, the people out there laughing, laughing at our defeat, but the fucking game hasn't started yet!"
"The whole world thought we were going to lose, now it's up to us to save it, Arsenal have never lost three in a row, never! (In fact, Descartes didn't know that Arsenal had a very miserable life in the mid-40s and 50s of the last century, not to mention consecutive defeats, and they were almost relegated, of course, these old things Descartes would not know, and few of his teammates knew about them.) So we have to show our momentum today, we have to tell everyone that Arsenal will not throw in the towel, that even if we die, we will not allow the enemy to step on us! ”
Some words are pale in words, but in the right atmosphere, they are enough to stir up the blood of everyone around them, Descartes' words may sound a bit like a speech, but in the current Arsenal dressing room, it has played its due role, and the Arsenal players instantly felt the blood surging, and one by one they stood up with a sigh.
When the Arsenal players walked out of the tunnel, they were greeted with a cacophony of boos from the stadium, with Arsenal's record at the Bridge over the past four seasons being six games, 0 wins, three draws and three defeats, and Blues fans have every right to despise them.
However, the boos from the fans did not affect the Arsenal players, who are all seasoned professionals after all, and this little bit of a battle does not intimidate them.
At the beginning of Besiktas, Turkey, that was the fanatical paradise of fans, tens of thousands of fans made a noisy sound almost overturned the roof of the stadium, and due to the special design of Besiktas's home stadium, the sound of the fans was like hovering in the stadium and refused to release, the ears were full of sounds like the earth shaking the sky, that was the real horror, but Arsenal still withstood the pressure and won all three points away from home, without the slightest look of timidity.
Professional players have long been accustomed to such unbearable noise.
Arsenal still put on the usual 442 formation in this game, although Wenger once considered using 352 to strengthen the defense at the beginning of the season, but the home defeat to Porto made him understand that playing against strong opponents with an unfamiliar formation is simply looking for death, so he has now gradually changed the formation back, in order to improve the team's defense, he is considering bringing in one or two capable defenders in the winter transfer window.
At the back of the starting line-up are Galla and Silvestri, both of whom have their own problems, but Arsene Wenger struggles with lack of rice and can only trust them for now. There has been no suitable replacement for Klich on the left, and although Arsene Wenger has sometimes moved Eboue to replace him, he has had to stick to this role for most of the time, and there was a change on the right flank, with Sagna, who had been in consecutive games, feeling calf discomfort before the game, and Hoyt appearing in the starting line-up.
With the injury of Xiaofa in the midfield, Denilson and Rosicky began to gradually sit in the main position, but sometimes in order to strengthen the defense, Wenger will also use Diaby or Alexander. Song replaces Denilson and sweeps up in front of the backline.
On the left flank is Nasri, a newcomer who has excelled this season, and on the right flank is Theo Walcott, who has matured.
Up front, Eduardo has not played much this season, last season's broken leg seems to have left a deep shadow on his mind, his performance this season is much worse than when he first entered the team, and the most important thing is that he has always been cautious on the pitch and cannot let go, Wenger has hesitated in his heart, wondering if the player has been scrapped.
Due to Van Persie's rotation in this game, Eduardo was able to partner with Bendtner, but Wenger put Van Persie and Descartes on the bench out of caution. Truth be told, Arsene Wenger isn't too sure.
The game fell into the rhythm of Chelsea from the beginning, although Scolari used his iron fist to temporarily close the Chelsea dressing room this season, but Mourinho's imprint on Chelsea was not so easy to be expelled, and the Chelsea players still stuck to Mourinho's style on their own: tight formation, aggressive pressing, using his body to control the midfield, and solving problems with counter-attacks.
Big Phil had assured his owner Abou at the beginning of the season that "beautiful football", and their goal count seemed to have achieved this goal very well, but in fact, Chelsea has not made too many adjustments to the squad this season, and the large expenditure for several consecutive seasons has made Abou feel that the fire is enough, and now he needs results, not unbridled efforts, so he chose to tighten the money this season, Scolari got only Deco and Bosingwa in the summer, but what he lost was Shevchenko, Crespo, Makelele, Wright. Phillips and other generals.
The summer in and out has actually decided the fate of Scolari this season, but Big Phil is not convinced, and he has relied on his own calculations to bring Chelsea to where they are today, which is already very rare.
In this game, Scolari's rhythm for Chelsea was to attack aggressively and try to get down the ground when Arsenal were in a slump, and never let them breathe.
So he arranged 6 attacking players in the front court in one go, Drogba, Anelka, Lampard, Joe. Cole, Malouda and Ballack all came on, and defensive midfielders such as Essien were on the bench, while at the back, John Terry and Alex also had strong assist capabilities. Cole and Bosingwa are both good crossers.
This arrangement is definitely in line with the taste of the boss Abu, Abu in the audience nodded again and again, secretly thinking that he really didn't choose the wrong person, Scolari just understands the boss's mind, much more flexible than Mourinho's dead head, Lao Tzu spent money to make him perform beautifully, he had to chirp crookedly with me, this time he fired him, the world was quiet, and he was much more worry-free.
However, after watching it for a while, Manager Abu's brows furrowed, because he found that although Chelsea had a large number of attacking players on the field, they didn't seem to know what to do once they reached the front of the opponent's penalty area.
Which country's style of play is this?
Abu shouted that he couldn't understand, he didn't understand, and the Chelsea players were actually quite helpless right now.
Under Mourinho's rule, the Blues have long been accustomed to tight defense and lightning counterattacks, although Mourinho and the media have quarreled that his team has no shortage of big wins, but people see more is the Blues' steel Great Wall of defense and lightning strikes, I don't know how many games, they are in the opponent's attack after grinding the temper, relying on quick counterattacks to put the enemy to death.
How easy is it for a team that is accustomed to scoring goals on the counter-attack to suddenly transform them into a flashy division like Barcelona or Arsenal?
Through Scolari's past resume, we can clearly see that Big Phil is good at fighting a bloody way in the chaos, especially good at fighting fires, when the Brazilian team was struggling in the hands of Luxenberg and Leao, and almost failed to qualify for the World Cup qualifiers, Scolari was ordered to not only form the world-famous "3R" combination, but also led Brazil all the way to achieve the five-star dream.
But at that time, commentators who knew the ball said that Brazil's attack basically relied on talent, and defense was the biggest change Scolari brought to the Brazilian team.
After coming to Portugal, Scolari's team is the same, Portugal has a large number of talented attacking players such as Ronaldo and Deco, but what Big Phil really remembers is that he brought a positive defensive attitude to Portugal, and the deepest impression left by this Portuguese team to the world is that they played a red and yellow card battle with the Netherlands in the World Cup, and the two teams worked together to get 16 yellow cards and 4 red cards from the referee! Without Scolari's tutelage, Portugal would not have been so tough in the past.
So we can think that Scolari came to Chelsea as a chubby version of Mourinho, and he made promises to manager Abou that his predecessor disdained and he couldn't fulfill.
Chelsea's attacking play is simply not going to be like Arsenal under his tutelage, and their traditions, the traditions of their former managers, and the traditions of their current managers, have no memory of 'flashy football'.
In this way, it is no wonder that Chelsea's attack is not chaotic.
The reason why Scolari was able to achieve such a dazzling result in the early days of leading the team is only because he calmed the dressing room very well, and with the quality of Chelsea's players, as long as there are no problems in the dressing room, they will basically not fall outside the top three of the Premier League.
As for the top, it was only thanks to the temporary weakening of rivals Manchester United and Arsenal, both teams that have had some problems this season that allowed Scolari to get away with it at the top of the table.
Chelsea's attack could not open up the situation, but Arsenal launched an effective counter-attack after gradually adapting to Chelsea's tactics, Nasri is a new player in the Premier League this season, and other teams including Chelsea are not too familiar with him, so he has more space and more opportunities to perform in this game.
In the 31st minute of the first half, Nasri burst down the left flank, and the defending Boshingwa did not know what he was doing, focusing on defending him and slipped to the touchline, only to have Nasri shake Bossingwa down with a feint and suddenly swoop diagonally into the heart of Chelsea.
Alex has just replaced Carvalho at Chelsea this season as Terry's preferred partner, and he can get on the position, mainly because of Carvalho's age and his better assist ability, it is Carvalho's turn to be in the position and fill in the position, he is still a little worse than Carvalho, seeing Nasri shaking Bosingwa, he hurriedly rushed up to fill the position, but his pace was not adjusted well, Nasri flashed him with a light smash, and continued to rush to the door guarded by Cech.
Seeing that the goal was in a hurry, the Blues captain Cech could not care about his defensive Edouard, he hurriedly skimmed over and prepared to rush up to block Nasri's shooting route, who knew that Nasri changed the line again the moment Terry rushed over, and wiped sideways into the middle.
At this time, there was no one behind Terry who could continue to fill the position, Terry was shocked, he knew very well what the consequences would be if he let Nasri erase it, so he made a hidden hand at the moment when the two crossed, although the action was very light, but Nasri was in the process of changing the line, and the center of gravity was already unstable.
Terry has a lot of experience, as soon as he saw Nasri fall to the ground, he immediately raised his hands, indicating that he was innocent, his movements were too hidden, and his expression was too innocent, the referee actually believed him and ran to the scene of the incident, and the referee looked down for a while and then showed Nasri a yellow card.
Nasri was so angry that he jumped up from the ground and chased after the referee to recount Terry's misdeeds, and Rosicky, who was next to him, saw that he seemed to be a little angry, and hurriedly rushed up to pull him away, lest he continue to pester the referee and get a more serious punishment.
After the plot succeeded, Terry had an imperceptible smile on his face, and he even applauded the referee, saying that the referee's decision was very accurate, which made Nasri even more angry, and he struggled in Rosicky's arms a few times, trying to rush over to reason with Terry.
Rosicky, of course, would not let him go at such a time, and while holding Nasri tightly, he shouted in his ear: "Calm down, calm down, don't fall for him!" ”
Nasri finally calmed down after struggling for a while, but he still looked at Terry with a raging rage in his eyes.
The game then continued to get back on track, Chelsea was still pressing Arsenal's attack, but Arsenal's counterattack should not be underestimated, and the two teams seemed to have suddenly changed their identities, Chelsea became a "gorgeous" Arsenal, and Arsenal became a "counter-attacking" Chelsea.
It wasn't until the 44th minute that Arsenal were given another corner, and Nasri came to the flank, ready to take the corner, which was likely to be Arsenal's last chance of attacking in the first half, so he looked extremely cautious.
Nasri took a few steps backwards, surrounded by the swearing of Chelsea fans, he didn't care, but took a deep breath and prepared to run, but before he could lift his foot, he suddenly felt a blow to the head, and there was a roar next to his ear, as if someone had hit him the head, Nasri screamed and fell to the ground, and when he turned around, he saw a silver coin flying happily in the air with a trace of blood.
It is common for fans to still have coins on the field, but it is rare to be able to throw coins so accurately and so hard, Nasri looked at it, and found that there were coins everywhere in a large open space behind him, and the people who threw coins were not one or two.
This kind of behavior is enough to be a mild act of violence on the football field.
Nasri immediately appealed to the referee, who studied it and asked the Chelsea coaching staff to immediately send someone to the sidelines to stop the fans from still doing the coins, otherwise they would suspend the game.
Chelsea's coaching staff are very unhappy, in their opinion, Nasri was just a small coin, where does it need to be so complicated? However, they also understood that the referee's decision could not be refused, so they waited for a long time before filming an assistant coach who didn't know what his name was coming to the fans in the stands and calling on those fans not to disrupt the order of the game again.
But the assistant coach was very perfunctory, he just waved his arms a few times under the pitch, and at first glance, you don't even know if he was calling on the fans to keep throwing coins or stopping the fans, and then he walked back lazily and spread his hands to the referee to show that he had done his job.
The referee frowned and didn't say anything, just turned around and signaled that Nasri could continue to serve, but he didn't know that the arrogant behavior of the Chelsea coaching staff made the unquenchable anger in Nasri's heart rush to the top of his head, this time, the Frenchman was really angry! (To be continued.) )