Chapter 111 Not Simple English A (Part 2)

In the third round of the league, Preston played away against the Royal Garden Rangers.

This London-based team has always been known for being rough. The entire team is quite fierce. In this game, they used their ferocity to curb Preston's attack. After Tiger was the core of Preston's midfield, they kept fouling against Tiger. Although many fouls were avoided by Tiger and were not injured by the opponent, they frequently pushed to the ground by the opponent or blocked by the body, which made Tiger unable to organize the attack smoothly. Preston's front-court pass and cut cooperation was repeatedly interrupted. In this case, Preston's offense was deadlocked. Although Tiger still relied on his own skills to create many opportunities for his teammates, The rude movements of the Royal Garden Rangers defenders also made Preston's forwards very uncomfortable. Even though Norgan and Gott were strong forwards, when the offense was deadlocked, Preston's defense line was constantly facing counterattacks from the opponent. The Royal Garden Rangers' England national team members, Trevor Sinclair, who had played for Preston's archenemy Blackpin for four years, and forward Spenser scored one goal in the first and second half, helping the Royal Garden Rangers gain a two-goal lead. Although Tiger scored a point in the penalty area through a beautiful personal breakthrough, he still could not recover the one-to-two defeat.

Before the fourth round began, Preston defeated York City in the first round of the League Cup three-to-one at home and entered the second round of the League Cup. This victory made Preston fans happy again. They firmly believed that the last loss was just an accident, and Preston would win consecutively next...

However, in the fourth round, Preston was tied by Birmingham two to two at home. It might be inappropriate to say that Birmingham was tied, and it seemed that it was more appropriate to say that Preston barely tied Birmingham - Birmingham led twice in the game. If Tiger had not suddenly broke out at the front of the penalty area before the end of the game and scored three consecutive players, Preston would have swallowed the bitter fruit of home defeat.

After four rounds of the league, Preston ranked sixth with seven points, and the top ranked Nottingham Forest, which won four consecutive victories. Next were Ipswich and Royal Garden Rangers with the same tenth. Sunderland ranked fourth with eight points, Middlesbrough and Birmingham both scored seven points, but Middlesbrough had one more goal difference than Preston, and Birmingham was one less goal difference than Preston, and they ranked fifth and seventh respectively.

For Preston, this score is not bad, but compared with the two consecutive victories in the first two rounds, this score does not seem to be satisfactory.

In the fifth round, Preston, who continued to be at home, played one-to-one with Middlesbrough. Tiger's pass after the breakthrough helped Gott win the first goal. However, Arsenal star Paul Mosen, introduced by Middlesbrough this year, equalized the score in the second half, and Preston failed in three rounds.

Considering that these three opponents have strong teams like Middlesbrough, the result is not particularly bad. However, in the next two away games, Preston lost consecutively and lost to Port Vier and Stoke City one-to-two. He only won eight points in seven rounds of games, and his ranking dropped to twelve.

"Preston was beaten back to the original!"

The media always change their minds. When Preston started with two consecutive victories and played a pleasing offensive football, they praised Preston for his always simple and rough style of play and dull English League One game. However, when Preston lost three losses and two draws in five games, they began to say that Preston's first two consecutive victories were just because his opponents didn't understand them. After knowing them, Preston's three tricks were useless...

This approach made Preston's fans very unhappy, but they couldn't refute it - it was a fact that Preston won a League Cup in six games. It has been almost a month since he won the league. What's more, their players seem to be in good shape, but they just can't score goals. If Tiger had not performed well in recent rounds, either scoring goals or assists, Preston would not have maintained a record of scoring goals in every game.

Obviously, Preston's tactical style is wrong, and the media's words are correct to a certain extent. Although the offensive tactics formulated by Moyes are very consistent with Preston's personnel composition - there is a midfielder Tiger with strong organization and breakthrough ability, two centers who can hold the ball in the penalty area and the frontcourt and have good scoring ability, both wings have breakthroughs and crosses, and the midfield has sweeping midfielder. This has the ability to play this unique ground-propelled attack. However, the ability on paper will never be fully displayed on the court. Moyes's tactics still have great flaws.

First of all, it is that it relies too much on Tiger's performance. Although Moyes is confident in Tiger's performance and Tiger does have such ability, it is also a very dangerous thing to do. All players have to go through Tiger's point in the offense to participate in the offense. Tiger's existence reduces the pressure on defense a lot. Once a player who can play a huge role on both offense and defense, once he is not on the court, other players are likely to be in trouble. After losing Tiger last season, he immediately lost to Luton to 5 by one to five. Although Tiger often ended last season when the game was still more than twenty minutes, Preston had basically established a great advantage at that time, so there would naturally be no problems.

Another problem is the defense. To play the ground-based offensive method, the team must have compact three lines so that there can be enough contact points and the offensive effect will be better. However, this has a fatal weakness. The overall pressure is too high when attacking. In addition, Preston's four defenders are not particularly fast, and being counterattacked by the opponent can cause a huge threat every time.

Ground propulsion offense will inevitably lead to inefficiency. If you encounter a fast counterattack team, it will be even worse. This is the problem with Preston now.

The media discussions stated that if these two problems were not solved, then Preston's next situation would not be very good. Previously in the League Two, because of the opponent's strength and reaction issues, Preston's weakness was not exposed, and he won the League Two championship with a winning streak. However, the League One team's reaction, judgment, tactical understanding and intelligence collection ability were far better than the League Two teams. With just a two-game winning streak, Preston's playing style immediately attracted the attention of most teams.

The Garden Rangers proved Preston's weakness with a victory, and then the other teams began to follow suit. Birmingham's draw quoted the Royal Garden Rangers' style of play. Middlesbrough did not follow this tactic. However, their relatively strong overall strength allowed them to draw Preston only away, which made Preston's next two opponents began to use midfield fouls and quick counterattack tactics to deal with Preston, and immediately won...

Nowadays, if Preston does not grasp these two weaknesses, even Middlesbrough cannot gain any advantage on them. However, after grasping these two weaknesses, the middle and lower-level teams Vier Harbor and Stoke City can defeat them, which can only allow other teams to adopt this method to deal with them.

In these seven games, Tiger's performance was impeccable. Even in two losses, Tiger proved his value with a goal and an assist. However, Preston's weakness of relying too much on Tiger began to be highlighted. When the connection between Tiger and other players cannot be effectively displayed, the role of other players on the court has been reduced to a very poor level. In addition to Ridell being able to cause some trouble on the wing, both centers can be silent on the court.

All Preston fans hope that Moyes can come up with a solution to these two problems, but Moyes's idea is different from them.

Moyes was not in a hurry to do this situation. He was a steady coach and never rushed forward. His tactical change ability was not what he was best at. On the contrary, what was outstanding was his overall view and his overall layout ability. Another very unusual thing was that he was patient and quite patient. He had already prepared for the current situation - even when everyone was blinded by the victory at the beginning of two consecutive victories, he had already considered that Preston's next game would definitely be in trouble.

It is not easy to build a complete team system, it takes time. In Moyes's view, Preston and himself are the most in short supply now, that is, time - he never thought that the League One would be a simple league, and he could conquer the world with a set of tactics. This is the case.
Chapter completed!