Football feast, starting from the acquisition of European clubs

Chapter 113 The Devil's Race
No matter how the English media tout it, Chen Ran has no intention to pay attention to it, because Crystal Palace will face the devil's schedule again.

In the next week, in addition to the tenth round of the Premier League, the UEFA Cup group stage will officially start, and the third round of the English League Cup will also start.

This is a severe test for the physical fitness of the Crystal Palace players.

On October 10, Crystal Palace will play an away game against the Greek team Aigalio.

On October 10, Crystal Palace will host West Bromwich Albion in the tenth round of the Premier League.

On October 10, Crystal Palace will play an away game against their opponent Charlton in the third round of the English League Cup.

On October 10, Crystal Palace will go to the away game again to challenge Birmingham, their No.30 opponent in the Premier League.

See, Crystal Palace have four games to play in eight days, three of which are away.

Chen Ran was once again so angry that he scolded the FA. If it was just a purely domestic game in England, it would be fine.

The key is that Crystal Palace still has to fly to Greece to play the UEFA Cup game. Even after the game, the team immediately took a night flight back to London.

However, under the exhaustion of boats and cars, the real time left for the Crystal Palace players to rest is probably less than 24 hours.

Crystal Palace were drawn into Group E in the UEFA Cup alongside Italian giants Lazio, yellow submarine Villarreal, Serbia's Partizan Belgrade and Greek side Aigalio.

Moreover, the competition system of the UEFA Cup is quite special. It may be because there are too many participating teams, so the group stage adopts a single round-robin system.

In other words, each team only played against each other once, regardless of home and away games.

This means that Crystal Palace must do their best in every game without any mistakes.

For the opponent in the first game of the UEFA Cup, the Greek team Aigalio, Chen Ran's eyes were darkened, and the information he could collect was very limited.

Since he didn't know his opponent well, Chen Ran decided to focus on me.

Given that it was an unfamiliar away game, Chen Ran decided to play it safe and sent out a counterattack formation.

center tony
Left Midfielder Cristiano Ronaldo, Right Midfielder Ribery
DM Yaya Toure, DM Modric, DM Simeone

Left back Chiellini, centre-back Southgate, centre-back Vidic, right-back Maicon
goalkeeper cech
It wasn't even 5 minutes before the game started, and Chen Ran was watching the fun.

It turned out that Egario's head coach Sartaritis also adopted defensive counterattack tactics at his home court.

Although Chen Ran didn't know Egalio well, Sartaritis knew Crystal Palace very well.

As one of the top football leagues in the world, the Premier League attracts attention from all over the world all the time.

As the biggest dark horse in the Premier League this season, Crystal Palace, which has won nine consecutive victories at the start and occupies the top of the Premier League, is naturally famous.

From an unknown small team, it has become the focus of many people's attention.

With the Premier League broadcast all over the world, Sartaritis did not miss the Crystal Palace game.

Especially after the results of the UEFA Cup group came out, he must watch every Crystal Palace game.

Knowing that Crystal Palace's offensive power is strong, even at his own home court, Sartaritis still adopted conservative tactics.

Chen Ran didn't expect that his reputation had already spread to Greece.

Standing on the sidelines and watching the game for 10 minutes, Chen Ran returned to the bench and sat down.

Anyway, there is still plenty of time, let's observe and observe, and we will talk about any actions in the second half.

In this way, the game came to the intermission with a score of 0:0.

In the locker room of the Crystal Palace, Chen Ran stood in front of the players and slapped his hands to attract everyone's attention.

"Guys, we are going to start attacking in the second half. Everyone cheers up. The UEFA Cup group stage is a single loop, and there is no chance of making mistakes. So, we must win this game, do you have confidence?"

"Have!"

"must have!"

"Boss, don't worry."

"Crystal Palace must win!"

After the chicken blood was beaten, Chen Ran adjusted the personnel again.

He found that Aigalio's central defender was average in height, so he replaced Yaya Toure with Crouch, and used the twin-tower tactic that was useless for a while.

As soon as Crouch was replaced on the Crystal Palace side, Sataritis on the other side knew that the situation was not good.

He already knew the Crystal Palace very well, and immediately realized that the Crystal Palace was going to adopt their famous twin towers tactic.

As soon as the second half of the game started, Egario's players discovered that the formation of Crystal Palace was overwhelming.

Especially the two wingers, sharp breakthroughs one after another, made Egario's full-backs start to doubt life.

It's not that Sartaritis doesn't know the power of the Crystal Palace Twin Towers tactics, but the players in his hands are limited in strength, and he can't do anything about it.

Aigalio is not without a tall central defender, but if he is tall and other abilities are not enough, Sataritis dare not use it.

No.601 minutes, Ronaldo made a pass from the left and assisted Tony to score Crystal Palace's first goal.

Then less than 3 minutes later, Ribery on the right also sent an assist to help Tony score twice.

No.807 minutes, Alves, who came off the bench, also assisted Mascherano, who also came off the bench, and scored the third goal to seal the victory.

In the end, when the referee blew the whistle for the end of the game, Crystal Palace beat the Greek team Aigalio 3-0 away.

The victory in the first game of the UEFA Cup group stage also brought Chen Ran a winning bonus of 250 million euros.

Although Crystal Palace won the UEFA Cup, Chen Ran was not happy.

Because in the game, both Southgate and Simeone suffered minor injuries to varying degrees.

Whether the Premier League will be able to play the day after tomorrow is still unknown.

An ordinary UEFA Cup group match is nothing more than a simple event news on England's side.

But in China, thousands of miles away, many fans are paying attention to this UEFA Cup game.

As Crystal Palace's winning streak in the Premier League continues to increase, as long as they are domestic media reporting on the Premier League, they will more or less introduce the situation of Crystal Palace, as well as the identity of the owner and head coach Chen Ran as a Chinese.

As a result, more and more fans have become interested in Crystal Palace and began to pay attention to Crystal Palace's games.

Regardless of whether they are concerned about Chen Ran or this team, at least Crystal Palace has initially had its own fan base in China.

I believe that as Crystal Palace continues to achieve good results, the size of this fan group will become larger and larger.

"I'm going, but I can't find the broadcast of the game. Do you know where I can watch it?"

"I didn't find it either. It seems that I can only wait for tomorrow's sports news."

"Go to bed and sleep, an ordinary UEFA Cup group match, and it's not the Champions League, it won't be broadcast."

"That's right, I don't expect to be able to watch the UEFA Cup group match, it would be nice to be able to broadcast the UEFA Cup final."

"But can Crystal Palace reach the UEFA Cup final?"

"Haha, I am very confident in Crystal Palace. Haven't you seen the recent news? Crystal Palace has set a new record in the Premier League, with nine consecutive victories at the start. It's amazing!"

"That's right, I also have confidence in Crystal Palace. As long as Chen Ran coaches, then Crystal Palace's results are guaranteed. Look at the teams participating in the UEFA Cup. Some of them have never even heard of them. I guess their strength is not as good as Crystal Palace in the Premier League. League rivals."

After the match against Aigalio, Chen Ran flew back to London overnight with the team.

It was already the next morning when we arrived in London.

Chen Ran did not let the players go back to their homes, but booked an entire floor of a hotel near the Selhurst Park Stadium, and then asked the players to rest quickly.

Because just tomorrow, the tenth round of the Premier League will start.

Although West Bromwich Albion's strength is not strong, Chen Ran is not sure about the physical condition of his players.He has no idea how much combat power he can display.

For this reason, Chen Ran made a substantial rotation of the lineup for this game.

Except for the defense line, he did not arrange the starting lineup for the players who played all the players in the last UEFA Cup.

center crouch

Left midfielder Evra, right midfielder Alves
DM Mascherano, DM Fabregas, DM Yaya Toure
Left back Chiellini, center back Thiago Silva, center back Vidic, right back Maicon
goalkeeper cech
Although after returning to London, Chen Ran arranged for inspections for Southgate and Simeone, and the results showed that there was no serious problem.

But to be on the safe side, Chen Ran still didn't arrange the two of them into the starting lineup for this game.

After all, the two veterans are both old and full of injuries. Their recovery ability is definitely not comparable to when they were young, so it is better to be careful.

West Bromwich Albion is also a Premier League lifter, but in order to avoid relegation, they still introduced a lot of players this season.

The more well-known one is Kanu, a Nigerian striker who came on a free transfer from Arsenal.

In addition, they also introduced striker Earnshaw from Cardiff, defender Albrechtsen from Copenhagen, defender Schmeka from Leicester City, and defender Contra on loan from Atletico Madrid.
The midfielder Greening was introduced from Middlesbrough, the goalkeeper Kuzzak was introduced from Hertha Berlin, the midfielder Junichi Inamoto was introduced from Gamba Osaka, and so on.

All together, West Bromwich Albion has introduced a total of ten players during this summer transfer period.

A total of more than ten million euros has been invested, which is a big investment for such a small club.

However, the head coach of West Bromwich Albion invited the famous former Manchester United captain Brian Robson.

Bryan Robson is an excellent player who has made great contributions to the brilliance of Manchester United.

But as a coach, he really didn't have any outstanding results.

When Brian Robson saw the lineup of Crystal Palace, he was overjoyed.

He had studied the schedule of the Crystal Palace and knew that Chen Ran and the others had just flown back from Greece after playing the UEFA Cup yesterday, and they were going to play the Premier League against him today.

In any case, it is impossible for Crystal Palace players to fully recover their physical fitness, and it is impossible to be at their peak competitive state.

Brian Robson had a hunch that his chance had come.

Maybe, he is the first person to stop Crystal Palace's winning streak this season.

Thinking of this, Brian Robson couldn't help but feel a little excited.

Because in the Crystal Palace's lineup, except for the defense line that remains basically intact, almost all other positions are substitutes.

"It seems that the Chinese man also knew that the physical condition of his team members was not good, so he made adjustments on his own initiative."

Bryan Robson stared at Crystal Palace's roster and looked at it again and again, but his mind was spinning wildly, should he change his lineup?
To be on the safe side, Bryan Robson also lined up a defensive counterattack lineup for an away game against Crystal Palace, which tops the league table.

At this time, seeing Crystal Palace send a large number of substitute players, Brian Robson was a little moved.

Fortunately, Brian Robson's brain is not completely heated, and he is still a little rational.

He finally gave up his plan to change the offensive and maintained the original defensive counterattack tactics.

With the whistle of the referee, the match between Crystal Palace and West Bromwich Albion officially began.

But less than 10 minutes into the game, Chen Ran frowned on the sidelines.

It seems that the intensive schedule and the long journey have a greater impact on the players than he expected.

Even those players on the field who did not play a full UEFA Cup game are not in good condition. It can be seen from their running posture that each of them has a very heavy footstep.

Moreover, Crouch is really not suitable for playing a single striker. As the only fulcrum for Crystal Palace in the frontcourt, he can't support the opponent's strong central defender.

He couldn't do what Tony did, carrying the opponent's defender while protecting the ball and waiting for his teammates to catch up.

Crouch can't be the fulcrum, and Crystal Palace can't make the transition through him to distribute the ball to Evra and Alves on the left and right.

The only way to attack is to leave Cesc Fabregas to go directly to Evra and Alves from the midfielder position.

Brian Robson also quickly discovered the problem of Crystal Palace, and immediately ordered the players of West Bromwich Albion to make targeted arrangements.

This time, after Crystal Palace's offensive methods became single, West Bromwich Albion's defense was much easier.

Although Chen Ran discovered Crouch's problem, he didn't plan to make adjustments for the time being. He had to wait until halftime to let the main players rest for a while.

In this way, Crystal Palace's front was weak, and West Bromwich Albion didn't want to attack. The two teams ended the first half with a score of 0:0.

During the half-time break, Chen Ran replaced Mascherano with Tony and Evra with Ronaldo, using a double-tower tactic to strengthen the offense.

As soon as he saw the Crystal Palace starting to make substitutions, Brian Robson immediately knew that Chen Ran was about to change his formation and strengthen his offense.

There is no way, Chen Ran and Crystal Palace are very popular now, and all the coaches who want to play against Crystal Palace, there is no one who does not study his tactics.

Bryan Robson also immediately called a tall defender from the bench, ready to change into the field to strengthen the defense.

The real decisive battle has only just begun.

(End of this chapter)