Chapter 398 Manchester City during the transition period of the new coach
4:6 a.m. Beijing time on September 3.

"CCTV, CCTV, good evening, dear audience friends, this is the live broadcast of the 2016st round of the 17-31 Premier League, Chelsea's home game against Manchester City."

"The players from both teams are ready on the field. Now let me introduce the starting lineup for this game!"

"First up is the home team Chelsea, wearing blue jerseys, attacking from the left side of the screen to the right!"

"..."

Manchester City (4-2-3-1)

Goalkeeper: Willy Caballero

Defenders: Clichy, Kompany, Stones, Jesus Navas

Midfielders: Shelvey, Fernandinho, David Silva

Forwards: Sane, Aguero, De Bruyne

Head coach: Guardiola
The game has begun, and the fans in the stands are jumping and singing. The whole stadium is dominated by dark blue, supplemented by light blue.

For the home team Chelsea, this is a game that cannot be lost. And for the visiting team Manchester City, it is the same.

If we compare the hard power, Chelsea will be better than Manchester City, because Chelsea's main player William is injured, while Manchester City is missing rotation players in various positions (Gundogan and Jesus)

Falcao cannot replace William's position, but Gundogan and Jesus' positions can be replaced by other players of equivalent value.

"Here at the Bridge whether rain or fine~"

"We can shine all the time~"

“Home or away come and see us play～”

"Jiang!"

clap clap!

"Jiang!"

Bang bang bang!
Under the leadership of the fan organization, the Blues fans on the scene sang the team song. At this time, the director's camera should have been given to the Chelsea players on the field, or to Mourinho, but the director did not do so. He chose the focus shot of Manchester City coach Guardiola among many shots.

"This is Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola. The Spaniard was previously the head coach of La Liga giants Barcelona and Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich"

"Being able to coach these two top clubs is proof of Guardiola's level"

"Yes, that's right. Last summer, the Spaniard came to Manchester City from Bayern. In a short period of time, he implemented his concept of passing and controlling football into the team's tactics. Just half a year after the transfer, he won the Premier League Coach of the Month. Guardiola's coaching ability is definitely beyond doubt."

As the two CCTV commentators analyzed, Guardiola is really an excellent coach. It was thought that Manchester City would not be able to find a suitable coach for them in a short time after Pellegrini left. Now it seems that this statement is completely wrong.

The passing and controlling football that Guardiola is keen on is the most suitable technical and tactical fit for Manchester City. Judging from Manchester City's performance in the league and the Champions League in the first half of the season, Guardiola is no worse than Pellegrini in his peak period, and may even be better than Pellegrini.

The director's shot of Guardiola lasted for a full 8 seconds, and then he gave a half-minute shot of the stadium. After Ibrahimovic was intercepted while dribbling the ball, the director gave Mourinho a brief shot.

This season's Mourinho and Guardiola can be said to be in sharp contrast. Mourinho, who was almost elected the best coach of the 15-16 season, did not perform at the level he should have this season.

Why do you say that?

Because it is already the 31st round, but Chelsea's league ranking is still hovering between third and fourth!

This is the result achieved even though the team has many stars such as Jiang Yuan, Hazard, Pogba and others!
"Give it to me!"

Jiang Yuan ran back from the left and asked Pogba for the ball while running towards the middle. At this time, Pogba was facing double pressure from De Bruyne and David Silva, and was under great pressure.

Seeing Jiang Yuan running over, Pogba did a few simple moves on the spot, pretending to coordinate with Jiang Yuan, but actually gave the ball to Zouma behind him, who then made a long pass to Azpilicueta who was advancing on the left.

"A very good team effort! Chelsea dealt well with Manchester City's frontcourt press and launched a good counterattack"

"At the beginning of the game, the players were full of energy. Azpilicueta ran very fast. Manchester City's defenders had to concentrate!"

"Fernandinho was moving to the wing, but he probably didn't notice Azpilicueta running down the wing at first, and he was a little slow in defending."

"There is no other way. Fernandinho gave up chasing Azpilicueta and went to find Hazard himself, leaving Azpilicueta to Navas!"

"Jiang Yuan ran back from the middle and asked Hazard to swap positions!"

Because Jiang Yuan and Hazard suddenly switched positions, Fernandinho's defense target changed from Hazard to Jiang Yuan. At this time, Jiang Yuan and Hazard played a trick and switched positions again. Jiang Yuan came to the middle again.

The frequent position changes of the players in the midfield and frontcourt will make the defensive players uncomfortable because they cannot be sure who their main defensive target is.

At this time, some experienced defensive players, such as Fernandinho, will respond by locking down an offensive player.

Fernandinho's choice is...

Jiang Yuan!

Have the opportunity!
Jiang Yuan and Hazard's eyes lit up when they saw Fernandinho following them to the middle. Hazard also successfully reached the left without being marked and successfully passed the ball to Azpilicueta.

Navas had already prepared for a one-on-one duel with Azpilicueta, but Hazard suddenly came up and directly disrupted Navas' plan.

Azpilicueta’s strength is not dribbling past others, so after seeing Hazard coming, he immediately chose to pass back!
With a "pop" sound, Hazard successfully received the back pass, and after that, the Belgian started to go down the bottom. Jesus Navas's defensive ability is not bad, but facing two offensive players at the same time, Hazard + Azpilicueta, Navas will still have some difficulty.

clap clap!

"It was a wall pass from Azpilicueta and Hazard, Hazard got the ball to the bottom line and made a cross!"

"Fabregas in the back post position, today Fabregas plays as the team's right winger. Let's see if this completely new position can activate Fabregas' ability on the offensive end!"

"Head ball, throw one into the penalty area!
"Ibrahimovic, just hit!"

"Oh! Caballero saved the ball!"

Huang Jianxiang exclaimed, although Ibrahimovic's header was not of high quality, it was still quite threatening to the goal because of its close position. But facing this close-range header, Caballero still showed his excellent reaction speed and successfully blocked Chelsea's first shot on target in the first half.

"Fuck!"

Before Ibrahimovic could feel any regret, Jiang Yuan behind him should have started to question him: "Pass the ball back, I'm right behind you!"

Just as Jiang Yuan said, at that position just now, if Ibrahimovic chose to pass the ball back, Jiang Yuan's shot would have had a 90% chance of breaking Manchester City's goal, but Ibrahimovic chose to shoot himself.

Jiang Yuan had already made good observations before shooting!
"My fault my fault!"

Ibrahimovic turned around and high-fived Jiang Yuan to apologize. Mourinho outside the field felt very uncomfortable and kept shouting: "Pay attention to cooperation, pay attention to cooperation, don't attack alone!" "Don't attack alone", this sentence was obviously directed at Ibrahimovic.

Fans say that Ibrahimovic will be weak against strong teams, and Mourinho, as the team's coach, is of course aware of this problem. According to data recorded by Brown, only 20% of Ibrahimovic's goals this season were scored against the top ten teams in the Premier League.

To put it bluntly, when facing a strong team, let Jiang Yuan and Hazard come!
Mourinho had just finished emphasizing Ibrahimovic when Azpilicueta took a corner kick from the right. Fabregas in the penalty area headed the ball back to Kante who was waiting on the outside. The latter made a long shot that hit the stands directly.

"Go back to defense, go back to defense, go back, all of you go back!"

Terry shouted loudly and set an example by running directly to the backcourt. Caballero took the ball from the ball boy, placed it around the penalty spot, and prepared to kick the ball.

Chelsea's defense was also quite neat, with only Ibrahimovic left in the front while all other players returned to defense.

It is said that Guardiola's tactical philosophy is passing and controlling the ball, but after all, he has just arrived at Manchester City and has not directly carried out a complete transformation of the team like Mourinho did.

In order to adapt to the technical and tactical characteristics of Manchester City players and the aggressive offensive and defensive features of the Premier League, Guardiola retained a major strength of the team's defensive counterattack after taking over Manchester City. This is also what makes Guardiola different from other coaches.

Generally, when a coach coaches a new team, there will be a stage where he cannot figure out the specific playing style. This is a transition period that every team needs to go through when changing coaches.

The strength of the Spaniard lies in his ability to develop a special tactic for the team during the transition period, ensuring that the team does not perform too badly during the transition period.

And retaining the defensive counterattack is what Guardiola did during Manchester City's transition period!

Manchester City's tactical changes were very fast, but Pogba and Kante were in good form at the same time today.

Fans familiar with Chelsea know that when Pogba and Kante are in good form at the same time, it is more difficult for Chelsea to lose than to win.

There is no way, the defensive coverage ability of these two French fellows is really strong!

In the 18th minute of the first half, both teams presented the fans with a very exciting feast of offense and defense.

The offensive tempo was ridiculously fast, which gave Jiang Yuan, who had just finished playing for the national team, a headache.

[Chelsea had bad luck today. Jiang Yuan's free kick was way off target. His footwork was obviously not good.]

[Manchester City is really awesome. I remember when I was in college, Manchester City was far inferior to Manchester United. What is the situation now? Has the world changed? ]

[Damn, it makes me dizzy. If Jiang Yuan wasn't in such a bad state at the end, Chelsea would have been 3:0 ahead of Manchester City now! ]

[If it weren't for the average form of Manchester City players, Manchester City would have been 10:0 Chelsea now]

[Don't shout, it's a fact that Jiang Yuan didn't have any feeling in his feet today, what are some people in the comment section complaining about? ]

[Manchester City is really strong, Chelsea is not bad either. Anyway, the neutral fans are enjoying it. If Jiang Yuan can score one, it will be worth staying up late today.]

[If you don't understand, just ask, when will Mourinho be sacked? In my opinion, Mourinho in the 2000s was indeed very strong, but now Mourinho is a bit embarrassed. He can't control Chelsea's current luxurious lineup.]

[??? I don’t understand, is fourth place in the league a bad result? Why do you criticize Mourinho so much?]

[It is a fact that Mourinho is not good enough. I have nothing to say if you coach other Premier League teams, but for Chelsea, Mourinho is indeed not strong enough]

[Why blame Mourinho? If you change other coaches, they may not be able to achieve the same results as Mourinho, right? ]

I don’t know when it started, but there are more and more doubts about Mourinho in the comment section.

Some people say that only Chinese fans have opinions about Mourinho. In fact, this is not the case. On Twitter and Instagram, many fans have also expressed their views on Mourinho.

There was no way around it. The Blues fans expected Chelsea to win three consecutive titles this season, but Chelsea ended up pulling a big one.

We have to find someone to take the blame, but every player played well, so who should be blamed in the end?

We can only blame the head coach Mourinho!

"Chelsea!"

Boom!

"Chelsea!"

Bang bang bang!
Seeing that they could not close the gap, the Blues fans began to put pressure on the visiting team. As the 12th player on the field, the role of the fans should never be ignored, especially at a home ground like Stamford Bridge. The boos from the fans forced Fernandinho to make a mistake in defense. Pogba suddenly stepped forward and directly pushed Fernandinho away with his body. The latter also fell to the ground with his hands spread out.

"Hey!"

Manchester City players were complaining, and Pogba saw Fernandinho fall to the ground. He immediately glanced at the referee Mike Dean with his peripheral vision, and saw the movement after Dean crossed his hands. Pogba continued his advance.

"Come on, come on, give it to me, give it to me!"

Jiang Yuan moved from the left to the middle and reached out to Pogba for the ball. The French midfielder of the Blues also made a very good through pass at this time.

The angle and strength were well controlled, and Jiang Yuan got the ball effortlessly.

"Jiang Yuan, go straight to the baseline and try to shake off Navas, but he failed after trying."

"You don't have to rush and take your time, but Jiang Yuan seems to be in a hurry to kick, just point it back!"

"Fabregas ran to the end line and stopped the ball with his chest. It was a very good way to handle the ball, but Chelsea's offensive rhythm may be slowed down because of this."

What?

Jiang Yuan almost shouted out when he saw Fabregas stop the ball with his chest.

Seeing that Chelsea's quick break was about to fail, Fabregas used his heel to knock the ball to Ake behind him, who kicked the ball sideways and the ball returned to Pogba's feet.

"Pogba, shoot!"

"The ball is in! The ball is in!"

"In the 29th minute of the game, Chelsea scored the first goal"

"Hey, but Chelsea was suspected of committing a foul before this goal, we need to take a look"

After Pogba scored the goal, he did not celebrate immediately, but looked at the referee McDean on the field.

McDean was seen holding the headset on his ear with his right hand.

The director gave a replay. Fernandinho made a mistake just now. When Pogba went to steal the ball, he knocked Fernandinho down.

The question now is, was Pogba’s previous move considered a foul?
……

(End of this chapter)