Chapter 536: The Final Sprint
Lin Yu was blown out of the air outside, as if a fairy had descended to earth, and among the two La Liga giants Barcelona and Real Madrid, Messi's teammates and Ronaldo's teammates tried their best to comfort the core of their team, hoping that they would not be too stressed by Lin Yu's affairs.
But what's the use of comforting, as strong players, Messi and Ronaldo are not weaker than Lin Yu's competitiveness, they won't just give in, although they didn't say anything, but their hearts are full of energy, they are waiting for the draw for the semi-finals, and then play it well, try to score as many goals as possible, and must not let Lin Yu be too proud.
And the draw results for the semifinals will come out soon, but as soon as this result comes out, Messi and Ronaldo are a little dumbfounded, Real Madrid and Barcelona are together, this will become a national derby in the Champions League, Messi and Ronaldo only one person is eligible to enter the final, and the person who enters the final will inevitably have more chances to score, and there are also more chances to catch up with Lin Yu.
Chelsea will face Bayern Munich, opponents in last year's final, and this will be a battle of revenge for Bayern Munich.
Bayern Munich with a vengeful heart is not easy to deal with, even without the help of the referee, this Bayern team is more mature and stronger than last year.
Thomas Muller has been more consistent, Gotze has played a vital role in the team, and Ribery has become more sophisticated. All this makes Guardiola very satisfied. So he is confident that he will go head-to-head with Chelsea, even though he knows Chelsea have knocked out Roma by a big score. But there is not much fear either.
In addition to caring about the upcoming semi-finals, Lin Yu has to continue to work hard for the domestic league, now the league has passed thirty-two rounds, there are still six rounds left, although Chelsea has basically booked the league title, but the theoretical suspense still exists, they have not lost during this period of time, and Arsenal, which is closely behind, has also not lost, and the gap between the two teams is now six points. It's not an unbeatable scoreline, with six games to go, and if Chelsea lose two games in a row and Arsenal keep on winning them all, there is a real chance of a comeback to win the title.
The more this time comes, the more strict Mourinho's management of the team becomes, and it would be a shame for him to end up in the gutter and give up the title to Arsenal.
Two consecutive Champions League wins are important. But the league championship is just as indispensable!
You must know that Arsenal are now only left in the league, they were eliminated by Bayern Munich in the Champions League, and they were unfortunately eliminated by Aston Villa in the FA Cup, so they will definitely play in the league with the most concentrated spirit. Chelsea, on the other hand, still have to face the dilemma of fighting on three fronts, and there must be no mistakes, otherwise it will be in trouble.
Back home. Arsenal started with an FA Cup semi-final clash with Aston Villa, a match with their squad fresh from the Champions League. There were only three days between them, so it wasn't good to rest. So Mourinho changed most of the substitute lineup, including Torres, Willian, Mata, Eto'o, etc., and Lin Yu and others sat on the bench.
Jose Mourinho certainly wants to win the title, but he can't joke about the league because the FA Cup is still a lot worse than the league title.
In the first half, Aston Villa and Chelsea were tied, with both sides scoring a goal each! The fighting power of Chelsea's bench is also surprising, and they are no slouch in the face of Bayern's all-out main line-up.
In the second half, seeing that the game was about to end in twenty or thirty minutes, but the score remained unchanged, Mourinho boldly replaced Lin Yu.
Sure enough, Lin Yu scored as soon as he came on the pitch, rewriting the score to 2:1, as long as this score is maintained until the end, then Chelsea can knock out Aston Villa and enter the FA Cup final.
In order to ensure that the score was maintained until the end, Mourinho simply used Lin Yu as a midfielder, and this was also very successful, and in the end Chelsea eliminated Villa to advance to the FA Cup final, where they will face the little-known Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup.
This final is already in May, before the Champions League final, so it's time to put your mind down and focus on the league for the time being.
After two league games, it will be the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals, so the most important thing at the moment is to win these two league games, as long as Chelsea do not lose, then there is no fear of Arsenal chasing behind.
In order to win, and in order to allow Lin Yu to break through the 40-goal mark in the last six rounds of the league, Mourinho has decided that no matter how he rotates, he will not let Lin Yu be substituted, unless Lin Yu himself thinks that he is physically exhausted and asks for rest, then he will definitely agree, but it seems that there should be no problem in any aspect, Lin Yu's body has always been great, and his physical strength is also sufficient, although I don't know what the reason is, but Mourinho still has this eyesight.
In addition to Lin Yu will remain in the starting lineup, Hazard, Schurrle, Oscar and others will get the opportunity to rest, after all, the showdown with Bayern Munich after the two league games is the main event.
Although Chelsea won Bayern Munich in the Champions League final last season, you must know that the semi-finals are still very different from the finals, the final is a winner-winner, and the performance is a little bad, but the semi-finals are different, the semi-finals are two-legged games, divided into home and away matchups, which makes there are a lot more variables, and you can't be careless.
Fortunately, Chelsea has enough substitutes, Hazard can go to Torres when he is tired, Lin Yu can play on the left side if he is tired, Schurrle can play Willian, De Bruyne and even Eto'o when he is tired, and Oscar can go up to Mata.
The squad at the back is also thick, with Raphael Varane, Cahill, Luiz, John Terry, Branislav Ivanovic, AZP, Bertrand, Coentrão and Ashley Cole all able to rotate.
As for the back position. In addition to Gundogan, Ramires and Frank Lampard, there is also Van Ginkel who has returned from injury. Meaning Mikel, Essien and others, such a strong bench thickness. In fact, it is also an important guarantee that Chelsea has been able to maintain multi-front operations without declining results.
Therefore, in the 33rd round of the league, Mourinho still made a big rotation, and he wanted to let the main players have enough rest.
Except for Lin Yu, almost all the players who played in the Champions League were given the opportunity to rest, while those who were unable to participate in the game were given the opportunity to play.
Although the opponent in this round of matches is only the weak team Norwich, Mourinho does not dare to be careless, after all, he is going to play away from home, and anything can happen. And in the earlier 33 rounds of Arsenal and West Bromwich Albion, Arsenal managed to beat the opponent and won again, so Chelsea can't lose, once they lose, they can't deal with the game calmly.
In this game, Lin Yu played on the left side, putting Torres in the front, anyway, it was not the first time that this kind of play was done, and it turned out that Lin Yu and anyone could cooperate very well. It's better to be a player of a high level and he can respond with the same high level.
So the game ended up being 3:1, with Lin Yu scoring twice and Torres scoring a goal. However, one of Lin Yu's two goals was assisted by Torres, so some people say that Lin Yu will clash with Torres when he plays. It was because he didn't know Lin Yu at all to say something like that.
Lin Yu has debuted from the left side before, and he likes to play on the two wings the most. Especially on the left side, he likes the feeling of cutting inside and shooting.
Because at that time his feet were not balanced. If he hadn't gotten the ball player, he would have been a great right-footed player, and because of that, he was very obsessed with the left side.
It's different now, he can shoot the bow left and right, as long as it's the front court, he can adapt to any position, but no one calls him a panacea, because that would degrade his ability, call him a panacea, it's better to call him the almighty king.
This game is not as difficult to play as imagined, Chelsea's substitutes are very capable, and they will perform desperately when they finally get the opportunity to play, so the final score is also very telling, and the only goal is because Norwich can't block a long-range shot, this kind of shot is really pure luck.
In the game, Mourinho only replaced Lin Yu with Eto'o in about 70 minutes of the second half, which was still a chance for Eto'o to play, not because Lin Yu was physically exhausted or did not perform well.
Someone said a long time ago that multi-line combat is the depth of the bench, maybe some teams performed well at the beginning of the season, but once it reaches the middle and late stages of the season, there will be continuous problems due to physical reasons, so it is true that bench thickness is the key to multi-line operations.
Those little-known dark horse teams in the Champions League group stage come to the Champions League to play a few games, and the league may be lost a lot of points, so in fact, many teams come to the Champions League, they don't fight very hard, they just go through the motions and see the world, they don't want to make both ends empty.
Three points are easy to get, others are envious and jealous, some people envy Chelsea's bench thickness, some people envy Chelsea has an omnipotent Lin Yu, anyway, there are envy, there are jealous, there are resentment, all say that Mu Xiu will destroy it in Lin Feng, in fact, this is really true.
Chelsea are feeling a bit chilly at the moment, and they seem to be facing the encirclement of the United Earth Army.
And the most terrible thing is actually not these, these words, as long as the player's psychological quality is better, there is nothing, the most terrible thing is that some transfer rumors began to go viral.
Today it was said that Juan Mata was going to move to Paris Saint-Germain.
Tomorrow it is said that Luis is moving to Barcelona.
There are even people saying that Hazard is going to move to Real Madrid!
But nothing compares to someone privately rumored that Lin Yu will leave Chelsea in the summer transfer period and go away, as for which giant he will go to, I don't know yet, but the person who said these words swore that Lin Yu would leave.
Now the fans panicked, and even the players were a little panicked.
Mourinho knows the seriousness of this situation, one is not good, it may lead to discouragement, and when it comes to the game with Bayern Munich, I am afraid that one by one will not have the heart to play, so he is strictly forbidden to talk about related topics in the dressing room, and even issued a gag order, prohibiting players from talking about transfers, and training wholeheartedly.
Maybe there was a bit of a dictatorship to do so, but because of this, the atmosphere of panic began to fade.
Lin Yu also managed to divert the attention of the media with his own goal, scoring twice against Norwich City to take his tally to 36, just four short of 40 autumns, and with only one goal per game in the remaining five league games, that goal could be achieved if he averaged one goal per game.
It may be very difficult for others to score a goal, but for Lin Yu, it is really not a problem, if he plays at the level of Roma, let alone one goal per game, it is possible to score two goals in a game.
Therefore, Lin Yu is a natural MT, and when he is needed, he can come out to pull hatred, attract attention, and let those negative discussions end in him. (To be continued......)