Chapter 598 Manchester City has won 18 consecutive games and their opponents have been frightened.

It’s Christmas again, but for the Premier League players, this holiday has nothing to do with them.

The Premier League's schedule between Christmas and New Year's Day is very intensive. From December 23 to January 1, there are a total of 4 league games in eight days, with an average of once every 2 days.

Such an intensive schedule is definitely not a good thing for players who have played for half a season and urgently need a break to catch their breath.

Too intensive a schedule will not only cause players physical fatigue, but may also lead to injuries.

Many teams are full of injured players due to the intensive schedule during this period. In addition, the physical confrontation in the Premier League is already very intense, and the referees are also loose in standards, making players injured much more frequently than in other leagues.

Manchester City suffered a big loss because of this last season, and their lineup was almost never complete.

In addition, some teams will use this time to rush for points in an attempt to close the distance with the top team.

Therefore, teams at the top of the standings cannot be careless.

There is a negative example in this regard, and that is Arsenal.

Arsenal basically performs well in the first half of every season. After a fast start at Christmas, Arsenal's form begins to decline. At the end of the season, they are eliminated from the Champions League. They no longer have to fight on multiple fronts. In addition, in order to maintain their Champions League seat for next season, their form has improved. He recovered and finally secured the fourth place in a thrilling manner.

Arsenal followed this process for nearly ten years until they failed last year and fell to fifth place.

To deal with this situation, the best way is to make rotations in advance to reduce the consumption of the main players as much as possible, so that they can have sufficient physical fitness and condition to cope with this intensive schedule.

Guardiola has been preparing for this since the beginning of the season, and the rotation of the team's core players, including the forward, midfielder and defense, has never stopped.

Even Lin Quan, the absolute core of the team, has been rotated for several games.

And thanks to Manchester City's strong offensive firepower, after the first half of many games, the outcome has lost suspense. Therefore, Guardiola will replace the main players early in the second half and replace them with substitutes to further reduce the number of main players. Physical exertion to avoid injury.

This allowed Manchester City to maintain a very good condition at Christmas this season, with almost no major injuries.

If some players feel unwell during training or games, Guardiola will replace them as soon as possible to avoid aggravating the injury.

Even if the team doctor's examination shows nothing serious afterwards, he usually will not arrange for these players to play immediately. Instead, he will give them two or three days of vacation to let them relax a little.

After the 19th round of the league, Guardiola gave the players a day off.

Although they are about to go away to face Newcastle United, on such an important holiday as Christmas, the players still prefer to stay with their families.

The team's current momentum is good, and Guardiola will naturally not care about this kind of thing.

But in this case, preparations before the game will definitely be affected.

Therefore, in the game against Newcastle, in addition to using a large number of substitutes and rotation players, Guardiola also adjusted the team's formation, abandoning the 3142 formation and adopting a more traditional 433 formation.

In this game, Manchester City's three lines were rotated. Jesus replaced Aguero on the front line, Mbappe continued to start, and Sane replaced David Silva.

In the midfield, Seat B, Gundogan and Fernandinho replaced Lin Quan, De Bruyne and Kante.

As for the defense, Walker still starts, with old captain Kompany teaming up with Rudiger. The other full-back is Danilo, who was introduced from Real Madrid last year.

After Danilo joined Manchester City, he did not play many games on behalf of Manchester City. This time he finally got the opportunity to start, which made him cherish it. He performed particularly hard on the court and was very active on both the offensive and defensive ends. The entire left side You can see his active figure everywhere on the road.

This made Guardiola very satisfied with his performance and even a little surprised.

When the transfer was first made, Lin Quan expressed his unfavorable view, which also indirectly affected Guardiola's view of Danilo.

He once thought that he had bought a parallel import, but looking at it now, this guy still had some strength and was not a parallel import.

But compared to Walker on the other side, Walker is indeed far behind.

Although the introduction of Kyle Walker cost more than 52 million euros, Guardiola now increasingly feels that this deal is very cost-effective.

After Walker joined the team, Manchester City's defensive intensity on the right side immediately rose to a higher level.

Kyle Walker's defensive ability is very outstanding. Not only does he turn quickly and have strong physical confrontation ability, but he also performs very well when dealing with inward wingers.

Not only that, Walker has excellent foot skills and good offensive awareness. Not only can he pass a good ball, but he can also keenly capture the offensive opportunity, jump in at the appropriate time, and complete the fatal blow.

This guy is simply an all-rounder!

Facing the strong and recently popular Manchester City, Newcastle's formation can be described as cautious or even "cowardly".

Playing at home, they actually formed a 541 formation, which was outrageous.

Facing the opponent's iron-barrel formation, Manchester City's group of substitutes and rotations had a very difficult battle.

In the first half, they tried to attack in various positions, but it was difficult to create scoring opportunities.

After 45 minutes, the two teams ended in a goalless draw, with no one scoring a goal.

Judging from the scene, Manchester City firmly took the initiative in the game.

The ball possession rate between the two sides was very different in the first half. Manchester City's ball possession rate exceeded 80%, and the ball hardly left their feet.

Such a high ball possession rate resulted in a large number of shooting opportunities. In the first half, Manchester City blasted 14 shots, but only 2 of them were on target.

Although Newcastle's goalkeeper was busy with his feet off the ground, he actually only made two key saves.

Newcastle was quite satisfied with the score. After all, the purpose of setting up this iron barrel formation was to maintain a tie.

If they had met Manchester City last season, they might have started a real fight with their opponents.

But when encountering Manchester City, which has won 17 consecutive games so far, Newcastle has no way to go head-to-head with the opponent.

Teams that had such an idea before have become ghosts at the feet of Manchester City. They are not stupid and cannot follow the old path of others.

As long as they can draw with Manchester City and end the opponent's winning streak, Newcastle's goal will be achieved. As for whether the scene is good-looking or whether they can score goals, these are not important.

The opponent's intention was very obvious. Not to mention Manchester City's coaching staff, even the audience could see it.

In the stands of St. James' Park, thousands of Manchester City fans who traveled with the team would boo whenever they saw Newcastle taking the ball, and were very dissatisfied with their shrinking behavior.

For fans, the most annoying thing is this kind of dull draw without a single goal in the whole game. The people watching are sleepy and really can't cheer up.

Shortly after the start of the second half, seeing that the opponent's intention to continue to set up the bus was very determined, Guardiola could only let the main players warm up and prepare to play.

Although he no longer cares about winning streaks, Manchester City still cannot accept a draw in this game.

Once Newcastle drew with them, they tasted the sweetness.

The remaining teams in the middle and lower reaches will probably follow their example and use iron barrel formations to deal with them when they encounter them in the league.

To be honest, the iron barrel formation is still very annoying.

Breaking a dense defense is a worldwide problem. Although Manchester City is strong, it is difficult to break the opponent's turtle shell without putting in a lot of effort.

If every game consumes a huge amount of money, then they may not be able to sustain the consumption of multi-line operations.

It is not impossible for the team to collapse due to this.

Therefore, this game must be won.

In the 55th minute, Guardiola made an early substitution.

De Bruyne comes on, replacing Kompany.

Lin Quan came on and replaced Gundogan.

From the moment Lin Quan, De Bruyne and others appeared on the sidelines to warm up, the eyes of fans from both sides swept over them frequently in the stands.

It seems that the few people warming up on the sidelines are more interesting than the ongoing game.

At this time, seeing Lin Quan and De Bruyne, Manchester City's twin stars, about to take the stage, the mentality of the fans on both sides was completely different.

Every Manchester City fan was as excited as if they had been given a shot in the arm. Some fans who had been a little worried after seeing their team unable to win for a long time now felt relieved.

Seeing these two people, they felt very at ease and had an inexplicable sense of security!

As for the fans of the home team, they couldn't help but feel a little wary after seeing these two people playing together.

In the shadow of a famous tree, the pairing of Lin Quan and De Bruyne is one of the best offensive combinations in the entire football world. Any one of them can make the opponent tremble.

Playing at the same time, the fans of the other side can only pray to God.

After the two came on the court, the effect was immediate.

Manchester City's attacking rhythm has become smoother and more deadly.

De Bruyne's penetrating passing, Lin Quan's threading passes and connections in the frontcourt, and his occasional breakthroughs all made Manchester City's offensive threat soar.

Newcastle's defense began to become a little clumsy.

In the 62nd minute, Manchester City played a wonderful match in the frontcourt. After Lin Quan received the pass from seat B, he dribbled the ball into the penalty area, took a few steps diagonally, took away the two defenders of the opponent, and then knocked across the middle and followed up. Jesus scored the goal easily.

Manchester City finally cracked the opponent's turtle shell and took the lead.

After scoring the goal, Jesus excitedly rushed to the stands where fans of the away team gathered, raised his arms, and signaled the fans to cheer and applaud louder.

The Manchester City fans responded with even more enthusiastic applause and cheers, while the fans of the home team sighed one by one.

While lamenting the strength of Manchester City, he was still worried about the goal he just conceded.

They have persisted for more than sixty minutes. As long as they persist for another half hour, they can end Manchester City's winning streak. Unfortunately, they still fall short in the end.

Alas, I think Manchester City was just like them at the beginning, an ordinary team in the middle and lower reaches. Newcastle even had a stronger historical background than Manchester City.

But after the Abu Dhabi consortium took over, Manchester City rose rapidly and has now become one of the Premier League giants. It is a well-known top team in the entire European football world.

But Newcastle is still struggling with little improvement. I really don’t know when Newcastle will rise as fast as Manchester City...

Facing a dense defense, as long as you can score the first goal, the rest will be much easier.

If Newcastle does not want to accept defeat, they must attack, and once they attack, their iron barrel formation will be self-defeating. By then, Manchester City will have many ways to deal with them.

However, what Manchester City did not expect was that Newcastle had no intention of winning.

After falling behind, not only did they not launch a counterattack, but they further shrunk their formation and were still setting up the iron barrel formation.

This makes Manchester City confused. You are one goal behind. If you don't attack, aren't you afraid that we will run out of time in the midfield and back?

Newcastle are really not afraid. Losing puts no psychological pressure on them.

Manchester City is really too strong this season. So many giants and strong teams in the Premier League have all fallen at the feet of Manchester City. Who do they think they are?

Isn't it normal to lose?

Better than Liverpool, but lost to Manchester City by 6 goals!

They never thought about defeating Manchester City, and maintaining a draw was their biggest hope.

Now that this biggest hope has been shattered, Newcastle will take a step back and just hope for a small loss without any tragedy. This is it.

The opponent showed no fighting spirit and aggressiveness. Manchester City fell down for a while and realized that the opponent really didn't care about them spending time, and they also figured it out.

Facing such a Buddhist opponent, Manchester City has no choice.

Therefore, they did not besiege each other with as much intensity as before.

The victory is already determined anyway, so why waste that energy?

We are expected to face Newcastle who have resigned themselves to their fate, so we might as well save our energy to play the next game!

Fans from both sides strongly condemned the unenterprising behavior of both teams.

You have all started playing tacit football, so what are we looking at?

The boos at the scene suddenly became louder. This time, not only the fans of Manchester City were booing, but the fans of the home team also turned against them.

Seemingly feeling the anger of the fans, Newcastle reluctantly launched several attacks.

When Manchester City saw that they were moving, they unceremoniously hit their counterattacks several times.

Sane hit the goalpost twice in three minutes, scaring Newcastle into a cold sweat. He quickly retreated and stopped attacking.

Facing his opponent who had completely retreated, Sane put his hands on his hips and sighed.

Today's luck was really bad. With such a good opportunity, he hit the goal post twice in a row. If he didn't miss the center post again, he would have scored. (End of chapter)