At 4:00 a.m. Beijing time on December 18, Espanyol will challenge Celta away. This game is a good opportunity for Wu Lei. On the one hand, Wu Lei, who scored in the Copa del Rey, finally broke the goal drought, so the manager will give him a chance to play; on the other hand, the opponent Celta is not strong, and espanyol away from home, Wu Lei's speed advantage has more room to play. Therefore, this campaign is optimistic about Wu Lei's appearance, and even scores, scoring his first goal in the league in 552 days.
In the Midweek Copa del Rey, Wu Lei challenged the third-tier team, Atletico Cristo. Since De Thomas did not play, Anduador was also physically damaged due to the starting game, Wu Lei got the opportunity to start this battle and appeared in the front court with Moron. Just one minute into the second half, Wu Lei received a wonderful pass from Mo Long in front of the goal and easily broke the goal, equalizing the score for the team while also breaking his own 342-day club ball drought.
Regrettably, Wu Lei has since habitually missed a single knife again, which also made coach Moreno dissatisfied, so he was quickly replaced. Fortunately, teammate Gomez scored the second goal before the end of the game to reverse the score, otherwise the Spaniard would have been eliminated by the other side. It can be seen that although Wu Lei broke the ball drought, his state was not as good as imagined.
For Wu Lei, although he broke a layer of window paper, he still had to face a bigger test, that is, the 552-day ball famine in the league. According to statistics, Wu Lei's last league goal occurred in the match against Alaves on June 13, 2020, a year and a half ago. Fortunately, Wu Lei has every chance to overcome his inner demons again in this round, because the opponent in this round is not strong.
On December 17, espanyol officially announced the away roster, and Wu Lei was selected for the big list against Celta without suspense. Before the match, Espanyol was 9th with 23 points, while Celta was 14th with 17 points. Importantly, the home team is not in good shape at the moment, having not won 2 rounds, and its defensive line does not seem to be solid enough, conceding 21 goals in 14 rounds and conceding an average of 1.5 goals per game. However, after all, it is a home battle, so Celta will attack in this battle, which will also give Wu Lei more opportunities to impact behind him.
For Wu Lei, he still needs to avoid two embarrassing records in this campaign: 552 days of league ball drought, and 3 consecutive league games without playing. Prior to this, Wu Lei had missed 2 consecutive league games, and in these two games, espanyol won one and lost, but Wu Lei's biggest competitor Puado profited. In the last game against Celta, Puado scored twice to help the team beat their opponents 4-3. Wu Lei is going to refuel.