Messi was so scared that he cried when he maxed out his header talent at the start of the game

Chapter 697

On September 15, the sixth round of the Premier League arrived. English fans who have been suffering from watching the Three Lions games for a while can finally watch the league to refresh their eyes.

The Etihad Stadium welcomed the Lions Aston Villa as a guest. The head coach of the team is still the Scotsman who took over the team last season.

Wearing black-framed glasses, Martin O'Neill, who helped Celtic achieve the Scottish Premier League Triple Crown in 2001.

Although Villa's final ranking last season was only 12th in the league, the entire Villa executives are full of confidence in Martin O'Neill's leadership of Villa's rise.

The specific support of the team's top management is reflected in the large investment in the transfer market.

This summer!

Villa first spent 8.5 million pounds to buy the youngest captain in the history of the Hammers, Leo Cork, a natural leader midfielder, from West Ham United.

Then they spent 4 million pounds to buy West Ham United's top scorer last season, striker Marlon Haywood.

In addition, it also spent 3.5 million pounds to buy central defender Zat Knight from Fulham and 750,000 pounds to buy midfielder Mustafa Salif.

Not every club is like Manchester City, Chelsea, and Manchester United, which can spend tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars on the transfer market in each transfer period.

Villa's investment this summer can be ranked 8th in the entire Premier League! Ahead of it is Chelsea, which is particularly "frugal" this summer, spending about 20 million.

At this point in 2007, the transfer investment of the middle and lower clubs in the five major leagues usually fluctuated between 3 million and 9 million euros.

So!

Villa, which spent a "huge amount of money" on the club this summer, has its own ambitions. In addition to buying players, Martin O'Neill has also sold Gavin McCann, Aaron Hughes Samuel, Henderson, Hendry and other teams, including the main players in the rotation last season.

Villa's drastic lineup reform has been quite effective.

Since the new season, they have contributed two impressive games, a 4-0 victory over Blackburn and a 2-1 victory over Fulham.

So far, they have 3 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss, ranking 6th in the Premier League, temporarily in the Europa League zone.

This is Aston Villa's best start since the 1997-98 season.

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Five o'clock in the afternoon.

Etihad Stadium, pre-match press conference.

Martin O'Neill appeared at the interview site wearing a gray-brown sports sweater. The impression left by the Scottish media in terms of clothing is that he never cares about clothes.

He exudes the purity of football from head to toe, which is why he can successfully coach in the Scottish Premier League.

And now.

He brought this pure temperament to England.

"Of course we want to beat Manchester City. This is not just Villa, I believe it is also the idea of ​​the other 18 clubs. Defeating Manchester City, which just won the treble last season, means a lot. That will greatly boost the morale of the entire team."

"Today is destined to be an extremely difficult game. Today is an away game, and Manchester City must not want to lose in front of more than 60,000 of their own fans."

"But my players and I will go all out. We are fearless, because the team's goal this season is to impact the Champions League zone!"

If Villa ranked 12th in the league last season, this goal seems a bit ridiculous, but Martin O'Neill is the most successful head coach in the Scottish Premier League since 2000.

These words coming from his mouth made the reporters feel very natural, and there is even such a possibility!

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Guardiola, who arrived later, learned about Martin O'Neill's ambitions from the reporter's retelling.

"Well... great. I think Villa has a chance to enter the Champions League. Although I was not in Manchester City in the 2005-06 season, Manchester City at that time made a comeback from 17th place in the league to 1st place in the league."

"So, the season has just begun. I think we can all expect Villa to achieve that step next season."

"Of course, we will not give up the victory at home today. Because if we lose the game today, we may not be the first in the league tomorrow."

The Spanish young coach thinks he does not like and is not good at verbal battles with the opponent's head coachMouth cannon, but his subconscious answer made the reporters feel the taste of invisible pretense every minute.

The English Premier League reporters who are curious automatically interpreted the hidden meaning of Guardiola's words in their minds.

Before your Villa became a dark horse, our Manchester City was the biggest dark horse in the history of the Premier League. When your Villa was still struggling to chase the Champions League seat, we sat in the first place again this season.

If Guardiola knew what the reporters were thinking, he would definitely defend himself.

But the fact is that the Spaniard has never realized the kind of "proud" character in his bones, and he always says some invisible pretense inadvertently.

For example, in the original history, he often said a sentence calmly after the team won.

"We train hard off the field and execute the tactics on the field, so we deserve such a result."

This sentence sounds very annoying to other head coaches.

It's like a student got 100 points in the exam, and then the teacher asked him to go on stage to share his learning experience. As a result, this guy said: "I listened carefully in class and completed my homework every day, so I deserved 100 points."

But this is Guardiola.

Born with great confidence.

He thinks that as long as the team follows his requirements, they can win. If they lose, it must be because the opponent plays too well or the players' execution is not in place, and it cannot be that there is a problem with their own tactics.

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At 5:30, the Etihad Stadium's more than 60,000 seats were full.

The Blue Moon fans looked relaxed and chatted with each other waiting for the game to start. In the commentary desk of the stadium, two old friends, Wang Tao and Zhan Jun, were debugging the equipment.

"Tao'er, what do you think of today's game?"

"Oh, Teacher Zhan Jun. What's so nervous about playing against Villa? Haven't you seen a popular saying on domestic forums now?"

"What's that?"

"You don't even need to watch Manchester City's games. When you wake up, it's another big win!"

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