Chapter 425 A trip that disappointed Li Yi

It's just that Li Yi, who was very determined before and thought that he had a chance to return to his hometown, was completely disappointed after finishing the day's training and deliberately asked Friedman to learn about the next club's itinerary!

Because, it is said that it is a trip to Asia, but, in fact, this trip to the Far East of the Crystal Palace does not include the Huaguo that Li Yi thought would definitely be included!

China has a population of 1.3 billion, and there are not many people, and the economic development of China in recent years has also surprised the world. It can be said that in this section of Europe and the United States, if you want to make money, you have to go to China when you go to Asia.

This is also the original that Li Yi was unusually sure of before. However, after repeatedly questioning Friedman and confirming that the only destination for this trip to Asia was the United Arab Emirates, what else could Li Yi say? Even if he is valued by the club again, Li Yi doesn't think that Mansour will change the team's itinerary for the entire offseason for his words or two.

Moreover, even if Mansur was willing, Li Yi would not do so. After all, if he really wants to do this, Li Yi will be too arrogant! ――

After 2 days of simple technical and tactical drills, Friedman and a member of the Crystal Palace team took a plane to start this part of Li Yi's extremely lost trip to Asia!

The first stop of the Crystal Palace is Dubai, the base camp of Mansour!

Here, on July 12, 19, 23 and 26, Crystal Palace played several fierce confrontations with Al Ain, Al Gazra, Shabab and Al Senar Club, the four best of the UAE league.

Asian teams, no matter how strong they are, that's it, not to mention the United Arab Emirates, a country whose domestic league is not too developed!

Therefore, although the above 4 teams are considered to be the best in the UAE League, including many teams that have won the league championship and runner-up, in the end, it is not so difficult to win the opponent against Crystal Palace, which is not in place by personnel!

4 friendly matches with weak opponents, for Crystal Palace, the actual training significance is not very strong, the only benefit, perhaps, is to help Friedman through this kind of reckless game, decide the starting lineup of the team for the new season!

No, just before the end of the 4 friendly matches and the full staff of Crystal Palace are ready to return home, Friedman has a rough definition of the team's starting lineup for the new season!

New season, new atmosphere, the team owner spent a lot of money to buy a lot of practical stars! Although he was surprised that he was not fired, Friedman, who was only a day away from being fired, and was reserved for a day, must have considered a lot more things for the new season than Li Yi and other players!

First of all, after smashing out the most exaggerated transfer fee of more than 200 million euros in the summer of Europe's top five leagues, although Mansour did not say it explicitly, but for the formation selection of the new season, Friedman quite simply denied his favorite 5-3-2 before!

Of course, abandoning this formation, on the one hand, there is a relationship with Mansour, and more importantly, it is the current status of Crystal Palace!

Crystal Palace had just been promoted to the Premier League last season and no one would have looked up to them as a new Premier League team. At this time, Friedman played a super bucket formation like a back 5, and then hit the opponent to counterattack, which is naturally no problem!

But now? Don't forget, even if you don't count Mansour's investment in the summer, this Crystal Palace is also the defending champion of the Premier League!

You say, if you hold the title of defending champion, it's just a matter of playing a strong team, but if the team playing against Crystal Palace is a weak team, will people stupidly pounce and let you fight back? This is patently unrealistic!

So, it's not so much to please Mansour, it's better to say that it's Friedman who changes the formation, in order to better welcome the new season!

And after a little entanglement, in the end, Friedman has two sets of plans for the formation of the new season!

The first plan - 4-4-2 wings fly together!

Goalkeeper: No. 1 Diego López.

Four defenders: left-back No. 5 Zabaleta, two centre-backs No. 4 Vinson Kompany, No. 6 Lescott, and No. 2 right-back Alves.

There are four parallel midfield positions: Gareth Bale on the left, Luka Modric on the right, Sneijder 10 and Yaya Toure on the middle.

At the top are the two double-high combinations of No. 9 Li Yi and No. 20 Llorente.

Of course, having such a rough starting lineup in mind does not mean that the main position of these people mentioned above must be stable!

Perhaps, the main position of most of them is really solid, but there are still a few positions that Friedman needs to continue to work on.

First of all, look at the backline, Zabaleta is a versatile backfield who can play left and right, and can also play central defender, originally, he plays left-back, which is not too surprising! It's just that if this left-back position originally belonged to Bale, it would be hard to say!

After all, Bale's ability to attack and defend well in the Premier League last season, with superb speed and quick reactions, is already well known to passers-by! At this time in 08, although Ashley Cole's decline in form was not as exaggerated as it was after 2010, there were already many media in front of Bale's head as a world-class left-back, and they added a definite article to Bale, that is, the world's No. 1 left-back!

Although due to his age, Bale is not very mature now, but only because the media with good things is willing to call Bale the world's No. 1 left-back, his ability can already be seen!

Therefore, giving up Bale's defense and pushing Bale into the midfield position is not a very risky thing for Friedman. Because, after this changed the position for Bale, Bale played well, even if he didn't play well, it couldn't even be much better than when he played left-back, Friedman's change of tactics is very likely to become the fuse for him to get out of class later!

After talking about the position of left-back, and then looking at the midfield, even if the midfielders in the new season have changed from 3 to 4, and there are many new faces, there is no doubt that the biggest change in the midfield in Friedman's lineup is still in Modric!

As the midfield engine and offensive core of Crystal Palace in the first two seasons, Friedman had to face the dilemma in order to coexist with Modric and the team's newly acquired Sneijder, and "assigned" Modric, who spoke better and was more convinced of himself, to the right side!

As we all know, in football games, there is a huge gap between the wide players and the middle players, whether it is the style of play or the way they play! Therefore, although Modric is a very good player, whether he can be qualified for the work on the wing, all of this remains to be verified in the new season!

As for putting Modric and Sneijder together in the middle of the pitch?

Well, Friedman tells you that he didn't think about this choice, but this kind of thought, Friedman just thought about it, forget it.

After all, whether it is Modric or Sneijder, they are the kind of players who are strong in attack and weak in defense, or even have no defense, put both of them in the middle, and at the same time act as the core of the team's organization, will there be no problem of non-coexistence, first of all, from the team's defense, Friedman will not dare to do this!

Because, if you really do this, it's just a clean sheet on the weak team, and if you really run into a strong team, you will definitely be blown up and there will be no scum left!

After talking about the first set of 4-4-2 plans, the next step is to be regarded as Friedman's follow-up of the five major European leagues in the past two years, and in the case of stealing from Mourinho, he has made up a 4-2-3-1 formation!