Chapter 112 Records (Part 1)

A week after the Community Shield, the English Premier League in the 2004-05 season officially kicked off.

The team that all England are concerned about is Arsenal. They are only two league games away from the record that has been covered in 25 years. Starting from May 7, 2003, a 6-1 home win over Southampton in 2-03, Frenchman Wenger's team is constantly breaking all the records in English football: Preston remained unbeaten in the 1888-89 season, although at that time there were only 22 games in a season at that time.

The game, but it was still an unbeatable success at the time; Burnley was unbeaten in 30 consecutive games in the 1920-21 season, and they only lost three games at the beginning of the league. Their morale was restored and they maintained their unbeaten record until the end of the season, thus winning the first league championship in the club's history; Leeds United, unbeaten in 29 consecutive games in the 1973-74 season; Liverpool was unbeaten in 29 consecutive games in the 1987-88 season.

At the beginning of the new season, Arsenal had achieved an impressive record of 40 consecutive unbeaten league games. Today, there is only one record left in front of them: Nottingham Forest, led by Brian Claufe, set a record of 42 consecutive unbeaten league games between the 1977-78 seasons and 1978-79 seasons!

As long as they win the two league rounds that start the season, Arsenal will tie this record. After that, they will not lose in a single game and set a record for continuous unbeaten records.

Arsenal is in very good shape now. Even if they are going to challenge Everton away in the first round of the league, there will not be many people who are worried about it.

As expected, Arsenal defeated Everton 4:1 away and was unbeaten for 41 consecutive games!

On the other hand, Tony Donn's Forest team seemed to be in some trouble...

During the summer transfer period, Nottingham Forest frequently takes action, and is comparable to Russian rich Chelsea in the transfer market, and is in the limelight. This makes people look forward to Don't have a team, and the local media in Nottingham are also optimistic about this brand new Forest team.

In the first round of the league, Forests challenged Blackburn away. Before the game, Donne put a lot of effort into studying their first opponent, team, players, and coaches. He conducted investigations and analysis. He believed that he was already familiar with Blackburn, so he followed the convention. With confidence, he led his team to the Ewood Park Stadium of the Brown Wanderers.

Ninety minutes later, Forest, which had hope for the new season before the game, lost 0:1 to the home team Blackburn.

Judging from the score, it is good for the traditional teams who have newly promoted teams to play in the Premier League to lose only one goal. But the game process is not the case at all, and the scores always cannot faithfully reflect the gap between the two sides.

In this game, Donn lined up a 442 formation that was practiced the most in training, and sent the eleven people he thought were in the best form: the goalkeeper was Darren Ward, the center back was Yero and Matthew Epsen, respectively. The right back was French young player Zimbonda, and his performance in training had completely surpassed John Thompson. The left back was Leiden Barnes, who had been firmly in the main position in the second half of last season. The midfielder was parallel, and the Frenchman Franklibery on the left was no suspense, and the Frenchman was Franklibery on the left, and Ashley Young on the right, and George Wood and Albertini were guarding the middle. Freddy Eastwood and Mark Viduca were on the front line.

In addition, sitting on the bench were goalkeeper Paul Gerard, defenders Wesmogan, Herad Pique, midfielder Chris Commons and forward Pit Crouch.

This lineup is already the strongest lineup that Tang En can play, and it is also a stable starter in training before the season. Tang En does not think it will be much worse than Blackburn.

But Blackburn, who ranked 15th in the league at the end of last season, taught the Forest a lesson: Don’t think that you can buy a lot of players in the summer, even if you can be considered a capable Premier League team, the Premier League and the Championship are completely different in two worlds!

If you also play in the Premier League with the mentality of playing in the English Championship (formerly the English League One), failure is inevitable.

Many newcomers' performance after upgrading is not satisfactory. In addition to not only the lack of investment in the transfer market, it also has a lot to do with their mentality.

Judging from the game scene, the problem with the Forest team is in the transition from defense to offense. Albertini is obviously not very adapted to the fast and intense style of English football. He is slow in controlling the rhythm. Wood... Apart from defense, don't expect him to do other things for a while.

Tang En knew these problems, so he made the two wing forwards more active in the game, took more balls and tried to open the situation from the wing. At the same time, he asked the two forwards to frequently change positions in the game, constantly pulling them out and pushing them up, attracting the attention of Blackburn's defense line and giving space to teammates who broke through the wing.

The idea was very good. More than ten minutes into the game. The Forests' wing did cause great trouble for Blackburn. But Blackburn's head coach Mark Hughes soon discovered Donn's intention. The biggest threat to the Forest team was from the wing. Due to the personnel configuration in the middle, they could not directly threaten Blackburn's goal. So he simply placed the heavy defense troops on the wing. In this way, Ribery and Ashley Young tried several breakthroughs but failed, and even couldn't turn around after getting the ball on their backs, and they were completely silent.

The Forest's offense mainly relies on two sides. When Don En saw Ribery and Ashley Young being stared at by the opponent, he agreed to start the second-level offensive system - the full-backs inserted assists. Zimbonda and Leiden Barnes are both full-backs who like and are good at assists. In daily training, Don En also consciously asked the two full-backs to actively participate in assists, making the Forest's offense more layered.

The two full-backs inserted the back and activated the Forest's offense again. The two sides were back and forth on the court, and the offense and defense transfers were very lively. But the score was 0:0. In the second half, Mark Hughes became familiar with all the attacking routines of the Forest, and found a way to completely paralyze the Forest's side. He asked the team to strengthen the offense on the side and had a head-on battle with the Forest on the two sides, using attack to attack and instead of defense.   The Forest, which lacked experience and cooperated with the Forest, was gradually suppressed by the opponent on both sides, and then... Blackburn scored a goal.

When the home team's old guard Craig_short took advantage of the corner kick to score the only goal in the game, Ewood Park Stadium was in full swing, Blackburn made a good start, but the Forests tasted the bitter fruit.

Despite losing the first round of the league, Don Eun did not treat the players angry as he gave. At the post-match press conference, he admitted that his team did not perform well, but that was because "you can't expect a team that replaced nearly half of its main player in the summer to play a stunning cooperation and smooth attack. I was very satisfied with only one goal away from home."

That's right, Don Eun did not lose his temper with the players after the game, and the loss was in his plan. Even if he paid his tuition for his first Premier League season, and if nothing unexpected happened, the tuition would have to be paid from time to time. Nottingham Forest is not Arsenal, and Tony Don Eune is not Wenger, and he is not interested in carrying forward the record set by his team twenty-five years ago. If you want to be unbeaten, please continue to be unbeaten. If you want to win the championship, please work towards the championship trophy. Don Eun’s goal is very simple: to gain a foothold in the Premier League and survive.

Instead of pushing the blame to the poor performers after losing, it is better to think about what else the team hasn't done well. He still has a week to improve with all colleagues in the coaching staff during training.

After the first round of the game, the media commented on the performance of each team, and the evaluation of the Forest team was "disappointing". They believed that the Forest team, which spent 12 million pounds in the summer and bought eleven people, did not play anything that was eye-catching. The monotonous and unchanged wing attack put itself in a dead end.

Don En insists that the direction of the wing offense is correct, and only needs to solve specific details such as the coordination and running of the wing on the offense. At the same time, he hopes that Albertini will adapt to the Premier League as soon as possible. Even if he only plays half of his level at AC Milan back then, it will be enough to revitalize the Forest's midfield.

Seven days later, on August 22, the City Stadium ushered in the first home game of the Forest this season, and it was also the stadium held the Premier League again four years later. For many Forest fans, this is a memorable day.

On the day of the game, the city stadium, which could only accommodate 27,000 people, was full. Although the fans were disappointed that the team lost the first round of the game, they still firmly supported the young team. From the beginning of entering the court, the singing of the stadium never stopped.

When Don En was still a fan, he often watched La Liga, mainly watching the match between Real Madrid and Barcelona. Seeing this scene, he had to sigh at the differences in football culture between England and Spain. Being able to coach the game in such an environment is the dream of almost all coaches.

In this game, for those loyal fans, I can't lose anything!
Chapter completed!