Football’s First Defender

The away loss to West Ham United had a huge impact on Liverpool's pursuit of the standings.

The Premier League has always had a toxic New Year's schedule. In the continuous battle, there must be an unpopular spell, but it still happened.

Liverpool's three-game winning streak in the Premier League was suspended, and when other teams also played 3 games in 8 days after Christmas and could enter a rare recuperation period, Liverpool had to prepare hard for the next game in 3 days. Premier League supplementary match.

Watford, who was also dragged down by the Liverpool Club World Cup, had to play with him in such an inhumane fourth game in 12 days.

In the last game of Liverpool's three-game streak, they challenged Watford, who is ranked eighth in the standings, away.

As teams under the control of the Pozzo family in Italy, Watford, Udinese, and Granada in La Liga are all tools for the Pozzo family to earn family wealth.

The Pozzo family was originally based on the "black shop" of Serie A, Udinese, and was not satisfied with simply selling income. They began to borrow chickens to lay eggs and create wealth in another way.

The background of Udinese allowed them to directly loan a large number of powerful players in the "black chicken" lineup to the British Championship after they acquired Watford, which was in the British Championship at the time, and helped Watford Germany successfully promoted.

And the same way is also carried out in La Liga. Sometimes when Granada comes back from a summer offseason, fans will find that the team is full of unfamiliar newcomers.

At the beginning, Udinese frantically loaned 14 people to Watford to help them reach the Super League. For this reason, the FA directly forced the FA to modify the rules and began to limit the number of people on loan for a team each season.

Nowadays, Udinese, Watford, and Granada are in the top league at the same time, especially the huge income of the Premier League, allowing the Pozzo family to reap a lot from the football industry.

Although there is a limit on the number of people on loan, for several teams in the same top league, it is still possible for the teams to communicate with each other and conduct appropriate personnel deployment with each other. Nowadays, with Watford's income in the Premier League, the profits are greater, which makes the Pozzo family more interested in Watford's place in the Premier League.

Countless resources are poured into Watford. On the basis of relegation, selling more people and making more money is the business of the Pozzo family.

This year's Watford has a fairly obvious tendency to be an international team, and even the coach is a bit more cruel, and he can completely line up a starting lineup composed of players from 11 countries on the field.

This is all thanks to Udinese's crazy support before.

Of course, Mazari will not be as stubborn as the fans petitioned, and he will select starting players from 11 different countries. He will only send suitable players according to the strength of the team.

Well, 11 starters, from 9 countries, all right.

In addition to the three local English players, there are other players from Europe, South America, and Africa, which fully demonstrates the Pozzo family's strong global scouting capabilities and ability to cultivate talents.

The self-produced and self-sold model allows young players to practice in Serie A and La Liga, and then come to Watford to further play their worth, and then sell them to other teams at a high price.

Before the game, there were injuries in Liverpool training. Mignolet suddenly suffered a strain. As a result, Klopp had to use the team's second goalkeeper Bogdan when he could not recover quickly.

Although Klopp always complains about Mignolet's attacking ability, he has to admit that Mignolet's handling of the ball on the goal line is definitely world-class, compared to ordinary goalkeepers like Bogdan Still much stronger.

In this game, Mignolet's absence gave Liverpool's defense a considerable test.

You know, Watford's "Black Wind Shuangsha" combat effectiveness is already very strong.

The combination of Dini and Ighalo, Dini is brave, Ighalo's speed and technical ability are excellent.

Although this pair of strikers are not very well-known players, in Yang Feng's perception, they are definitely the first-class striker combination in the Premier League today.

Although it may not be like a top striker, he has comprehensive technical capabilities, and he does not have the skills to involve and pass the ball.

But the one-foot shooting skills of the two, and the finishing ability in front of the goal are still very good.

Yang Feng knew even more that Ighalo in the future would transfer to the Chinese Super League and kill all sides in the league. He was completely a T1 striker, but his teammates were a little weak. He thought he was stable and started to "sell points" As a result, after Ighalo was injured suddenly, the team was struggling to win a victory and was overtaken by a group of weak teams. As a result, he was relegated, so he could only say no zuo no die.

Deeney is also the banner figure of Watford. Even if he may be in a bad state during the game, but when he is on the court, he can inspire his teammates to work hard and show their attitude towards the game, especially When facing some rich teams, Dini's hard work in the game can completely drive his teammates to perform better and achieve better offensive performance in the game.

In such an atmosphere, for Liverpool, this away game is actually not so easy to win.

And in terms of player configuration, Watford and West Ham actually have similarities in terms of player configuration.

This kind of mid-range team prefers to use the traditional "black and hard" players, and use these players with better running ability and physical confrontation ability to play offensive effects.

Just suffered a loss on West Ham United. For Liverpool, there is still considerable vigilance for this game.

Except for the goalkeeper Mignolet, the rest of the players played with all the previous main players.

As a result, just after the start of the game, Liverpool suffered a heavy blow.

In the case of Liverpool's unsuccessful attack, the home team counterattacked directly close to the side.

The extremely impactful Watford side, although this time the cross in the counterattack was first cleared by Yang Feng.

But Yang Feng could only play it safe and get out of the bottom line, and still gave his opponent a corner kick.

As a team with slightly rough offensive methods, set-pieces are the opportunities that Watford are best at taking advantage of.

Abdi took this corner kick from the left. The corner kick was extremely fast, and it spun directly to the goal.

Everyone rushed forward and came to the goal to compete for the top. However, this pass was still a little bit high, which was more suitable for the goalkeeper to attack and catch the ball.

Bogdan took two steps out, took off with all his strength, and indeed picked up the high ball first.

"Steady!"

"Um?"

Looking at Bogdan's attack, Yang Feng thought that after Bogdan took off the ball, he should be stable, but there was a sudden change on the field.

In the process of holding the ball in his arms, Bogdan lost his balance slightly due to the instability of his feet after landing.

Although he tried to stabilize his figure while barely holding the ball with both hands, the ball was exposed.

Ake, the Watford center back in front of the goal, directly raised his leg high, exposing Bogdan's hands, kicking the ball with insufficient control.

Then Ake jumped forward directly in front of the goal and hit the ball into the net.

"The goal is scored!"

"Didn't you hit the goalkeeper?"

"The referee said there was no problem and Watford took the lead in the first three minutes."

Yang Feng was a little depressed. Is this goal a gift from the goalkeeper?