goal goal

Chapter 104 Playing with Fire
On October 10, the tenth round of the Premier League.

West Bromwich Albion vs Manchester City.

In the first half of the game, Manchester City was full of momentum and scored 3 goals.

Wang Yi continued to open the scoring.

Now Manchester City fans love Wang Yi more and more.

He has scored 10 goals in 17 rounds of the Premier League, far ahead of Kane, who has 212 goals. How can Manchester City fans not like such an explosive performance.

Among the best players and most popular players selected by Manchester City fans in September, Wang Yi was the best player, and the most popular player ranked second, second only to the first De Bruyne, but in the selection in October, Wang Yi is basically the first place in the double list.

In this game, Wang Yi opened the scoring consecutively, and this kind of Wang Yi also made Manchester City fans feel at ease.

But in the second half of the game, Guardiola was very dissatisfied.

It was a good situation with a 3-0 lead, but in the 70 to 77 minutes of the second half, in just 7 minutes, West Bromwich Albion scored two consecutive cities. The key was that there was a problem with the defense. The first goal conceded was Otamendi pressed too much, and then took the ball for a long time, was cut off by the opponent, and then drove straight into the penalty area. Ederson could only expand his defensive area as much as possible, but there was nothing he could do.

The second conceded the ball was even more messed up. After Ederson passed the ball to Walker, Walker knocked it horizontally to the central defender Stones. Stones either continued to pass the ball forward at this time, or gave it to Otamendi. But Stones directly passed back to Ederson, and the pass was much weaker. In this way, the West Brom striker who was in ambush came out directly, grabbed the ball, and shot directly. Qi even scored two goals.

The score was only 1 goal away.

The defensive line that Guardiola was most worried about broke out, so Guardiola asked the whole team to retreat and defend on the sidelines.

So the most embarrassing 10 minutes for Manchester City this season came, almost the whole team retreated and defended for more than 10 minutes.

That's how the game ended.

After the game, in the dressing room, according to media rumors, Guardiola sprayed the defense for 20 minutes.

This is also calculated based on the time. Usually, players will come out to take the bus at most 20 minutes after the game. Usually there will be players coming to interview near the bus, but today it took more than an hour to come out.

And the leader Guardiola's face is ugly.

The media immediately focused on Otamendi and Stones, and the faces of these two people could not be covered up no matter how hard they were.

After returning to Manchester City, Guardiola thought about it. This situation cannot happen again. West Bromwich Albion is still a poor offensive team.

The next game was an away game, the fourth round of the Champions League, played at home in Naples.

And in this game, as soon as it came up, Naples was full of momentum, and it was like the last round of the Champions League group match, when they came up, they scored first.

But just 2 minutes after Callejon's goal, a free kick chance, Wang Yi shot, hit the goal post, and then bounced in front of Stones, Stones helped Manchester City equalize the score.

The Manchester City team, which equalized the score, was shocked.

Jesus and Sterling scored consecutive goals.

It's already 3-1.

Just 60 minutes in good form, Callejon caught Delph's pass error and scored twice.

In this way, the score was reduced to 1 goal.

This mistake is extremely low-level.

Delph wanted to pass the ball to Otamendi, but Otamendi didn't stop the ball, which was okay because there were no defenders around Otamendi.

But after Otamendi got the ball, he didn't know what he was worried about, so he passed the ball directly, and passed it directly to Callejon in Naples. Callejon took the ball and rushed forward, Ota Mendy slipped again and shook Stones directly. Stones was originally in the back, so he had to go up to defend, but Callejon shot directly at the top of the arc.

In short, this is a series of mistakes.

very low level.

Guardiola jumped angrily again, but there was nothing he could do. Now there are only three central defenders in total, and the substitute is not as good as these two, and it's not the winter window, so there's no way to come.

How should this be done, but in any case, after this game, Guardiola is firm in his heart that he must buy a central defender in the winter window.

Fortunately, at 70 minutes, Bernardo Silva, who came off the bench, scored Manchester City's fourth goal of the game and stabilized the situation.

The rhythm of the game changed immediately, and Naples was directly discouraged.

Finally the game is over.

On the plane back to Manchester.

Guardiola has a message.

"Pep, Southampton is short of money. They are willing to accept Mangala's offer plus 6000 million euros. You can start talking about salary with Van Dijk."

"Is Liverpool's offer lower than ours? Doesn't Van Dijk want to go to Liverpool?"

"Liverpool directly offered an offer of 8000 million pounds, but Southampton refused to accept it, saying that it wanted 8000 million pounds. In this way, Liverpool would have to consider it. There was no offer from us. Of course Van Dijk wanted to go to a good team. Only Liverpool, now we have come out, Southampton have accepted the offer, Van Dijk naturally wants to come to us."

"It seems that Southampton still hates Liverpool. What about Mangala?"

"He agreed, he is also a substitute here, and he can be a starter when he goes to Southampton, so anyone will choose."

"But if Mangala is gone and Van Dijk is here, we still have three central defenders. To be honest, Otamendi is at the level of a backup central defender. Stones also needs to be brought in. I think we need another player."

"Substitute?"

"Not necessarily. Stones' level is really not very good. He may have potential, but now his immediate combat power is not good. Pep, do you still remember the one from Athletic Bilbao that you paid attention to before?" Central defender."

"Laporte?"

Guardiola immediately thought of it. Guardiola has been in La Liga for many years. He has paid a lot of attention to La Liga, so he has known the central defender of Athletic Bilbao for a long time, but it was a bit dark before, and he only thought about it Van Dijk is gone.

"Bilbao's players are not easy to buy. They must pay liquidated damages. They basically don't talk about transfers with others."

Ruben is very familiar with Athletic Bilbao.

"And he can't compare to Van Dijk, but he is indeed better than Stones."

Arteta has also watched a lot of La Liga, and according to his observations, this is the case.

"The two sides advance together, you can ask Laporte how much the liquidated damages are."

Guardiola made the final call.

(End of this chapter)