Chapter Eighty-Five: The Final Battle
On December 31, the last day of 2016, Sunderland welcomed the challenge of the "Blues" Chelsea led by Italian coach Antonio Conte at home, and this game was also the final game of the first half of the English Premier League; Because the match between Old Trafford and Tottenham at home has ended, Manchester United, which won by one goal, also surpassed Manchester City, the rival of the same city, and locked the Premier League halfway championship by two points, while Chelsea will temporarily rank third in the standings regardless of victory or defeat, followed by the "Gunners" Arsenal team, which is close behind, in fourth place, followed by Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, which have a gap of 5 points with the previous one, and then the "Toffee" Everton team that currently has 30 points; Since the game between Sunderland and Chelsea is the last game, Sunderland will rise to sixth place in the standings if they can win, and because of the advantage of goal difference, even if they draw with Chelsea, they can beat Everton in sixth place, so the fans are also very important to this game. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info
"Welcome to the last night of 2016 to watch the 19th round of the Premier League brought to you by Leap Sports, which is also a highlight of the final round of the first half, the 'Blues' Chelsea challenge the 'Black Cats' at the Stadium of Light, and the game of this season's dark horse Sunderland, this game is played by me and Zhang Luzhang to give you a live commentary."
"Hello audience friends." Zhang Lu greeted.
"Coach Zhang, what do you think of this game, or in what direction do you think the game will develop?"
"First of all, Sunderland's performance this season is eye-catching, if I'm not mistaken, before the start of the season, Sunderland's odds to win the championship should be ranked second to last in the Premier League, even lower than the promoted horse Burnley, but no one thought that this team would perform so magically under the leadership of such a young coach, and the outstanding results have a lot to do with the team's successful recruitment, whether it is Halilovic or Carlos, They have been able to follow the manager's tactical approach well since they arrived, and of course Dokar, although he suffered an injury a few days ago, he has been impressive before and after the injury, and the consistency of the Australian international Jedinac has also played a very important role, contributing a lot in defence; On the other hand, thanks to the excellent tactical concept of head coach Nan Xiao, whether it is whether other teams are relatively unfamiliar with him, or light on the enemy, but obviously he has studied the opponent very thoroughly, so the tactical game between the two coaches today is very interesting. ”
"Chelsea's side is relatively transparent, Conte has achieved very objective results after changing the back three tactics, his personnel and tactical ideas have gradually become the object of imitation by other teams, and the return of David Luiz and Azpilicueta's solid play in the right central defender position also make Conte's formation very balanced, and he has a very good performance at both ends of the pitch; At the same time, against Sunderland, I think Conte will definitely deploy two wingers, Hazard and Willian to use their individual ability to impact the opponent's two full-backs, especially Hazard's side, against Billy Jones, who is not very good at one-on-one defense, Chelsea's attack is very likely to open a gap from his side. ”
"Thank you very much for the pre-match analysis done by Coach Zhang, and then I will introduce to you the starting list of the two sides in this game......
Sunderland's starting line-up is exactly the same as the previous league game against West Bromwich Albion, and Chelsea's side still lined up their strongest line-up, goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, three central defenders are Cahill, David Luiz and Azpilicueta, left and right wings are Marquez Alonso and Moses, in the middle of them is Kante and Nemanja Matic, Costa is still playing as a central striker, Hazard and Willian are on either side, because Pedro suffered a knee injury in the last game, so he was not in the squad for this game. His place was also replaced by Brazilian winger Willian.
Although it is an away game, Chelsea still control the rhythm of the game as soon as they come up, and Sunderland is fully recycled, there is a clear gap between them and Chelsea, so it is understandable to take such a choice, after all, Nan Xiao has said more than once in front of the media that as long as he does not violate the premise of violating sportsmanship, he will take any means to achieve his goals, and the bus is just one of the simplest.
Chelsea's front three are just too strong, Eden Hazard and Willian are both very good at blasting, and Costa is very versatile, not only can he create his own chances to score, but he also has a strong ability to create chances for opponents and find links with his team-mates. Chelsea did give most of the ball to the feet of Eden Hazard and Willian after the opening kick-off, as Zhang Lu said before the game, but the difference was that the two of them were not attacking Sunderland's two wings at the same time, but Willian frequently came to the left to seek a link with Hazard, and also took the opportunity to attack the side of the Bjelly Jones defence in turn.
Chelsea's tactics were very successful, and in the first 10 minutes of the game, Billy Jones made a mistake under the successive breakthroughs of Eden Hazard and Willian, in fact, it cannot be called a mistake, but rather a defensive failure; Willian received a pass from Eden Hazard near the touchline, facing the defense of Billy Jones coming forward, a bulltail feint shook the opponent to the ground, Billy Jones fell a little embarrassed, William broke through his right hand, but he fell to his left hand because of the opponent's shake, causing a burst of exclamations from the fans.
Willian had already had two of his team-mates in the box after breaking through Billy Jones, and Jedinak also stepped up to right-back, not pressing Willian too closely, but trying to block his inverted triangle pass.
Willian had the ball at his feet, had reached the edge of the penalty area, facing the defense of Jedinak, he wanted to continue to break through into the box, but when he looked up, he found that Moses on the right wing was telling to insert, at this time Sunderland's players were focused on Willian and the Chelsea players who were in the box, but no one saw Moses' running route, not even left-back Van Aanholt did not notice.
Seeing that Moses was about to enter the box from the other side, Willian adjusted the ball at his feet slightly, and then crossed the ball to the far side; The ball flew past Sunderland's defenders before goalkeeper Mannone spun around as the ball flew to find Moses on the edge of the six-yard box, leaping high to meet the ball and slotting a powerful header into the bottom left corner of the net.
Mannone was helpless against Moses' header, and was too close to him to react before the ball slammed into his own goal.
"Moses' header is a great achievement! Opened the scoring for Chelsea and the score was changed to 1-0! Sunderland, who were playing at home, were down by a goal less than 10 minutes into the game! ”