Winning a victory, in Dick's view, means that the window paper has been pierced. There will be no problem with Manchester City's strength. Now that they have won their first victory in the Champions League, then the next championship In the cup, at least their performance will not be affected by some inexplicable effects.
After this big victory, Manchester City's condition seems to have indeed begun to recover!
After three consecutive draws in the league, Manchester City ushered in its first victory in four rounds in the ninth round of the league. Zema shined and scored a hat trick in the game, plus Bale and Vidal's Goal, Manchester City swept Stoke City 5-0 at home. Although such a victory was not enough to move Manchester City up the rankings, nor did it narrow the points gap between them and Liverpool, however, two consecutive Champions League and The victory in the league also allowed Manchester City to completely get out of its previous bad state!
In the tenth round of the league in midweek, Manchester City relied on goals from Torres and Kompany to defeat Middlesbrough 2-0 and achieve two consecutive victories.
In the eleventh round of the league at the weekend, Manchester City still defeated Bolton Wanderers 2-0 even though they sent some substitutes away from home. This time it was Parker and Di Natale who scored. Manchester City's multi-point blossoming characteristics began to be revealed. came out, and in this round of the league, Liverpool lost to Tottenham 1 to 2, and the points were tied by Chelsea, who were chasing closely. Manchester City also returned to the third position, only two points away from the top two, with The goal difference advantage exceeds that of Manchester United, which has the same points. Arsenal is lagging behind this season. They currently have only 20 points, four points behind the Manchester duo.
After three consecutive victories in the league, Manchester City also won two consecutive victories in the Champions League in midweek. They performed extremely steadily at home and finally defeated Egypt 2-0 with goals from Torres and Yaya Toure. Inhoven, with eight points after four rounds, has established a sufficient advantage in the group!
In another game, Bayern was held to a 1-1 draw by Fiorentina in an away game and only scored four points after two rounds. Now they and Manchester City both have eight points because they were held to a 1-1 draw by Manchester City at home. Therefore, they gave up the top spot in the standings, while Fiorentina only has three points and PSV only one point. The leading advantages of the two strong teams have been gradually revealed!
Five points ahead of third-placed Fiorentina, which means that Manchester City only needs to draw with Fiorentina away from home in the next fifth round, then they can qualify one round early. For Florence, the fifth round will also be In a life-and-death battle, only by defeating Manchester City and then hoping that Bayern will at least draw with Manchester City in the final round can they rely on their mutual winning-loss relationship to overwhelm Manchester City and qualify!
There is no doubt that the fifth round is Manchester City's last test in the group stage. Being able to survive in such a situation will give Manchester City the real courage to win the Champions League.
And that game was played on November 26th. Before that game, Manchester City played against Arsenal at home in the league-for two such important games in a row, Manchester City seemed to have to make a certain degree of trade-offs. .
"I'm very happy that we have established enough advantages. Although we have not yet determined the qualification, our next situation is already very good There are still three weeks until the fifth round. During this time, we can focus on Now in the league, we were far behind before"
What makes Dick feel a little embarrassed is that he just said that he would launch an impact in the league, but perhaps because the previous winning streak consumed too much physical energy and condition, in the twelfth round of the game on Sunday , Manchester City once again drew at home, and the draw was given to the mid-table team Tottenham. After such a draw, the gap between Manchester City and the top two widened to four points, but with good luck One thing is that the state of the city rivals Manchester United does not seem to be good. They lost to Arsenal 1-2 in the away game, but were left one point behind by Manchester City. Arsenal also used this victory to draw closer to the two teams in Manchester. The distance between teams¡
However, in the fourth round of the League Cup in the following week, Manchester City easily won. Although Leeds United resisted tenaciously, Leeds United, which has now been reduced to League One, is no longer Manchester City's. Opponent, they lost two goals to Manchester City without temper in the away game. Manchester City easily advanced to the quarterfinals. Their next opponent was Stoke City.
The continuous campaign has made Manchester City players a little tired. In the weekend game, they were almost tied with newly promoted Hull City. If Torres hadn't completed the buzzer beater before the end, they would have suffered two consecutive draws in the league. Fortunately, this game After winning the game, they were not separated by the top two. The gap was still four points, although there were still two opponents to catch up with.It won't put pressure on Manchester City's players.
And the next league game is the game that Dick values ????more.
Arsenal's situation this season is not very good. Although they have not suffered too many personnel losses this season, although Hleb joined Barcelona, ??they also hired young player Nasri from Marseille. At the same time, although Gilberto Silva and Flamini moved away at the same time, and they also hired young midfielder Ramsey from Cardiff. On paper, there was no loss. However, with Adebayor's troubles, this season They were greatly affected by the start of the season. Although they had defeated Manchester United before, they quickly lost to Aston Villa. In the first 13 games of this season, they have lost four games, and they have lost all. They are weak teams like Fulham, Hull City, and Stoke City. They have not played against any strong teams yet. If this continues, their situation will not be good.
The successive departures of key players have made their losses seem huge. There are too many young players in the team, and there are no veterans who can hold the team down. Naturally, they are prone to fluctuations. In addition, Adebayor, who has high hopes, has not performed well this season. , only three goals have been scored so far, and one was a penalty kick. It is natural for the performance to decline.
In fact, Arsenal is not without good players this season. For example, Robin van Persie, Nasri and others have performed well. Nasri even scored twice against Manchester United and shined brightly. However, they did not There is too much continuity, and too much energy is involved in the Champions League, so the decline in performance naturally seems normal.
Cesc Fabregas was injured and unable to play, which made Arsenal's starting lineup look so bland. Except for goalkeeper Almunia and veteran defender Silvestre, the other players were basically under the age of 25. Young players, a defense of Hoyt, Djurou, Silvestre and Clichy, a midfield of Song, Diaby, Denilson and Nasri, a front line of Turner and Van Persie - like this The lineup looks really shabby. Even though there are many talented young players among them, no team has ever been able to achieve outstanding results relying on a group of Mavericks. Even Manchester United's 1992 generation also had Shumei. As the backbone of powerful and experienced players like Chelsea, Pallister, Keane and Cantona, they have grown rapidly. Wenger has sold veterans too aggressively in recent years, and only the unbeaten season of 0304 was achieved. In the past four years, no one is left in the undefeated main lineup. Goalkeeper Lehmann retired, defensive line Lauren Campbell was sold, Toure was injured, Cole was poached, midfielders Silva, Pires, Ljungberg was sold, Vieira was poached, forward Henry was poached, Bergkamp retired - no giant team that has reached the top will be split up so quickly and so completely!
Under such circumstances, Wenger can still keep Arsenal in the top four. This is his business. However, Arsenal like this actually has no hope of hitting the top championship. It is just a performance. Instability is enough for Arsenal to always fall short at the last minute!
Facing an Arsenal that is obviously too young, Manchester City appears to be much older even though they have only formed a team for more than a year.
Without Fabregas, Arsenal's midfield organization has completely dropped to a different level. Although Nasri is talented, he and Fabregas are two different types of players. He is better at breaking through than organizing offense. , Arsenal's offense was still very fast, but it was a little less organized.
Under such circumstances, Manchester City used more counterattacks to tear apart Arsenal's defense. Arsenal's defense can be said to have been completely reduced to second-rate status. Players like Sylvester, who was also a colander in his peak period, are now Arsenal can actually play as the main central defender, which to some extent proves how weak Arsenal's defense is now.
After a stalemate in the first half, before the end of the first half, Manchester City broke the deadlock with a beautiful counterattack. Ribery broke through from the wing and passed the ball. Clichy made a clearance at the landing point, but the ball hit Silvis. Te's body bounced into the penalty area, and Deco, who broke into the penalty area, took a big advantage. He faced the rolling ball and kicked the ball unceremoniously, opening the scoring for Manchester City!
Such a mistake resulted in conceding the ball, which made Arsenal even more messy after the start of the second half.
In the 56th minute, Manchester City expanded the score. Deco's midfielder passed the ball beautifully to Zema who was on the sidelines. Zema passed a beautiful diagonal pass directly behind the Arsenal defense. Djurou turned around and was a step slower. Ribery got the ball in front of him and then broke into the penalty area. Facing Almunia's attack, Ribery used a beautiful shot from the front of the penalty area to expand Manchester City's lead!
After taking a two-goal lead, Dick began to make substitutions. Both Deco and Ribery were substituted, replaced by Vidal and Bale. Ten minutes later, Di Natale also came on, replacing Torres. ¡
In the next game, Arsenal launched a fierce attack to regain the score. However, under Manchester City's tight defense, they did not get too many good opportunities. Instead, Manchester City counterattacked and kept attacking them. The defense line caused huge pressure.
In the 83rd minute, Djurou hastily tripped Di Natale who broke into the penalty area. The referee decisively awarded a penalty kick. Di Natale hit the penalty kick and scored Manchester City's third goal. This The goal completely sealed the victory for Manchester City. Although Arsenal has not performed very well since the beginning of this season, this kind of temperless loss to Manchester City by three goals did make Arsenal look quite shameless
"You cannot win with young people alone. The composition of the team must be scientific. Young people, the Mesozoic generation and veterans are all indispensable. When Arsenal performed best, they never lacked the Mesozoic generation and veterans Of course, this is Arsenal My own business, at this time, I am only thinking about the next fifth round of the Champions League. That game is very important to us.¡±