"The old man didn't want to play seriously."
Recalling the way he was ignored in the tunnel just now, Li George didn't realize until he saw Manchester United's starting lineup that the other side basically gave up on the League Cup match today.
In terms of lineup, several key players are not on the starting list. Rooney, Ronaldinho and Vidic all sat on the bench.
Left back Evra is absent from this game due to injury.
"If I had known this, I would have made the entire substitute lineup to disgust the old man." George Li said following several of his assistants.
"You will be considered a negative player and will be punished by the FA." Brian Kidd is an honest person. He thinks he would not do such a thing, but he can't bear to do it.
"That's it. Let the team play hard in the first half. In the second half, I have to let a few people who don't usually play come up and play."
"Due to injuries recently, it seems that our players have all had the opportunity to exercise." Colin McGee reminded George Lee.
"Yeah?"
"Except Fabian Delph." Chris Kasper looked at the recent team lineup and told Lee George a name.
"Then let him play the second half."
"But he is not in the squad today."
"I......"
George Li felt that he was going to be pissed off by several of his assistant coaches, who all said useless things.
I was speechless for a moment and didn't know what to say to them.
"Come on, kill Manchester United!"
George Li could only vent his anger on his opponent and shouted loudly to his players on the court.
The Leeds United players were all taken aback. They didn't know why the head coach was so excited today. It seemed that he was determined to win Manchester United today.
However, just after the game started, Li George discovered that although Manchester United hid some of their main players today, their playing style today was indeed quite proactive.
Today, Manchester United did not use 442, which Ferguson was good at, but followed the popular trend and changed it to 433.
Carrick, Fletcher and Scholes sit in the midfield, and the three frontcourt players are Giggs, Park Ji-sung and Saha.
In the first 5 minutes, except when Leeds United pushed the ball into the frontcourt, as long as the ball was in Leeds United's half, Manchester United's frontcourt trio kept harassing Leeds United's defense.
This is not the first time that Manchester United has learned Leeds United's way of playing against Leeds United. George Lee clearly remembers that in a game with Manchester United two years ago, Ferguson imitated Leeds United's high press in the second half and began to copy Leeds United's style. Alliance tactics.
However, today Ferguson is determined to try his hand at Leeds United. I just want to learn your tactics and kick you to see how you deal with it. How you kicked me today, I will kick you next time, and I haven't been on the main team yet, so you can't see through me.
We can only accept that Ferguson was just wishful thinking.
It's just that today, George Lee was very angry and gave the players on the field a death order, asking them to kick Manchester United to death.
In the 7th minute of the game, Bowyer, who played well in the last game, continued to start today. He changed direction on the left and broke through Wes Brown. After completing the inside cut, he passed the ball to Graveson.
Then Graveson passed the ball to Smith who suddenly appeared on the left.
Because when Bowyer was cutting inside just now, Graveson predicted it in advance and ran to the penalty area first, so Smith did not rush forward this time, but filled Bowyer's original position.
After Smith got the ball, Brown, who was originally defending this area, had been taken away by Bowyer, so Smith now had no one to defend him and could pass the ball calmly.
But Smith did something no one expected and chose to hit the goal directly on the left side of the penalty area.
Smith took the ball in a good position, so the ball was very fast. Manchester United's defense did not predict this at all.
While Robinson was still telling Ferdinand to keep an eye on Davis, he saw the ball suddenly flying towards the goal and quickly reached out to block it.
In the end, he blocked the ball out of the baseline with his right arm.
"Hey~" Smith waved his arm sadly.
Robinson looked back at his former teammate when he picked up the ball at the baseline. Smith is now the captain of the team, and it can be seen from the ball just now that he has become more and more comprehensive, and is no longer the stupid young man who only rushed into the penalty area before.
"It seems that letting him play on the left for a while has some effect. At least he will run there by himself, instead of just going to the penalty area." George Lee is also rare to see Smith attack like this. Way, start to put gold on your face.
"Didn't you arrange it before the game?" Kidd chose to expose George Lee's lies, because before the game he had repeatedly emphasized that when the wide players cut in, Smith should not blindly choose to squeeze into the penalty area and give the wing players The road player gives way to space in the middle.
"I have emphasized it before, but has he heard it?" George Li continued to be tough.
"Shit, what I heard was that you threatened Alan." Kidd exposed him again because after finishing the pre-game arrangements, he saw George Lee pulling Smith aside to start a small game.
Even though it was very quiet, Kidd could still hear the words "nightclub", "side road", "extra training", and "grounded".
George Lee is too lazy to talk to Kidd now, because he has decided to buy a top winger next season, and he is good at cutting inside. He needs the team to give up the middle.
If the middle is full of people, cutting inside will definitely not work.
George Lee looked at the field again. Now Leeds United took the initiative on the field, taking advantage of the numerical advantage in the midfield to frequently launch pressure in the middle and front, destroying Manchester United's organized offense.
In the 27th minute of the game, after Fletcher was intercepted by Davis who returned to midfield, Smith passed the ball directly behind Manchester United on the right. Kuyt received the ball and made a pass from the baseline. At this time, Manchester United players and Leeds All United players came to the small penalty area.
After a scuffle in front of the goal, Davis finally poked the ball into the Manchester United goal.
Davis, who had just wanted to celebrate, heard the referee's whistle. This was not the sound of a valid goal, but the sound of an offensive foul by Leeds United.
The referee determined that Davis had used his body to knock down Ferdinand before scoring.
Davis kept holding his head to indicate that he had not committed a foul.
But the referee stood by his decision.
Then two dramatic scenes appeared off the court. The director gave the audience two synchronized shot playbacks. One was George Lee who started celebrating after seeing the goal. Halfway through the celebration, he knelt down after seeing the referee's penalty. He spread his hands and shook his head from side to side; on the other side was a scene where he was blushing and started to curse incessantly, but after seeing that the goal was invalid, he couldn't even smile.
It's just that this disallowed goal was just an episode in the first half.
The offensive combination of Saha, Giggs and Park Ji-sung did not pose any specific threat to Leeds United in the first half.
On the contrary, Leeds United, which was whistled off a goal, was not affected afterwards. In the final stage of the first half, by putting pressure on Ferdinand, he caused a passing error.
Through this Manchester United mistake, a goal was scored.
According to Lee George, Leeds United spent most of the first half focusing on strengthening defense against O'Shea, another defender of Manchester United, while letting go of Ferdinand.
The main reason is that George Lee believes that Ferdinand's ball-playing ability is better than O'Shea. Based on the principle of the barrel effect, it must be easy for O'Shea to find loopholes here.
The second thing is that George Li knows that Ferdinand sometimes loses concentration and gets distracted.
Watching O'Shea in the first half of the game made Ferdinand relax his vigilance, and suddenly putting pressure on him later in the game easily caused him to make mistakes.
Sure enough, Ferdinand made a careless pass and was intercepted by Smith when he passed the ball to Carrick. Leeds United immediately launched a counterattack. Through a collision with Davis, Smith entered the penalty area and shot into the far corner.
1 to 0.
After the start of the second half, Ferguson decisively replaced Ferdinand who made a mistake.
Just when everyone thought Ferdinand was replaced because of his mistakes in the first half, Li George took the initiative to replace several main players and replaced them with young players, without intending to further expand the lead.
The coach of George Lee next door also replaced Carrick and Park Ji-sung in a tacit understanding.
In the end, with Smith's only goal, Leeds eliminated Manchester United and entered the next round of the League Cup.
