It's not terrible to lose, but it's sad to not know how. Facing the promoted horses at home, Guoan finally lost 1-2 and suffered its first defeat of the new season. After the game, all kinds of doubts arose, and many of them pointed the finger at the change in formation, so the change from three back to four back is really the key to Guoan's first defeat? In fact, this is not the case, the poor attack is the reason.
Turning the time back to the winter training at the beginning of the year, in fact, since then, Suarez has confirmed the tactical idea of wanting to use three central defenders as the main system this season, which is why Mamadou was later brought in as a foreign central defender. However, unlike the main candidate conceived by the Portuguese before, because of Zhang Chengdong's injury, Bai Yang became a candidate to partner with two foreign central defenders. Although the tall centre-back didn't play particularly well last season, to be honest, in the first four games of the season, Guoan's No.26 played fairly solid overall, and don't forget that he also provided an assist for Guga, which was one of Guoan's only two goals in the open game.
In addition to this round of the game against the Shenzhen team, the remaining 4 games Guoan in the three central defender system although the game is not good, but at least the results are acceptable, from the result-oriented point of view, can not be said that this formation is unsuccessful, but it should be noted here that although Guoan is undefeated with 2 wins and 2 draws, the number of goals is obviously not as good as before, and the offense is quite sluggish, there is almost no decent cooperation, the team that mainly plays pass control in the past seems to be gone, which is particularly impressive.
In fact, after the change of coach last year, everyone knows very well that Suarez himself is not known for adjusting the attack, and the easiest thing for him to see the effect when he comes to the team as a newcomer is to improve the quality of defense, and it is obvious that he has done a good job in this regard. However, it should be pointed out that the team's offensive efficiency and performance under him last year were reasonable, with Fabio scoring 12 goals in half a season. But in the first five games of the season, Guoan seems to have changed teams, focusing almost all their attention on defense, and the offense is a bit of a "heaven to eat". In the first few games, the players dribbled forward far less often than they did after half-time, which was a surprising performance.
In the last round against defending champions Shanghai Port, the man who was considered to be able to break this embarrassing situation appeared, and he was Zhang Xizhe, the core of his comeback from the ban. There is no need to say what level Guoan No. 10 was in the past, even if he is over 30 years old, he still has excellent organizational and offensive ability. However, judging from the performance of the last round of games, I don't know whether it is due to the physical problem of not playing high-intensity official games for several months, or the inadaptability to his position on the side, Zhang Xizhe under the 3 central defender system cannot be said to be particularly awkward, but at least there is still a gap from the expectations of the outside world. As for the team's goal, it relied on Bai Yang's bright spot and Zhang Yuning's penalty goal.
This campaign against the Shenzhen team, out of comprehensive consideration of personnel rotation and other situations, Su Shuai changed to play the 4 back system commonly used in Guoan in the second half of last year, but the effect is a big gap with the past, although the rhythm of the game was once controlled after the opening, but as the game progressed, it was the away team that played the pass control system that Guoan was more familiar with, Guoan became the tired chaser, and the offense was also no improvement.
In this way, the reason for the team's defeat or poor performance is not entirely a matter of formation, because the team is not satisfied in attack regardless of the formation. Not to mention scoring goals, even pushing forward was a big problem. Su Shuai also said in a previous interview that in this preparation period and the previous league break, the team practiced more than one formation, but there still seemed to be not much to do about the offensive line. You must know that the team now has 3 or 4 international-level wingers and center forwards, but whether it is Yang Liyu, Lin Liangming, Fang Hao, Cao Yongjing, or Zhang Yuning, they have not found the rhythm of attack. Except for Adebenro, who can bring some breakthrough threats after his debut, the others really don't have much achievement, and it can't be said that the players don't work hard, but the effect is really not obvious.
In the game against the promoted horses, when the team needed to attack, Su Shuai's substitution adjustment was really unexpected, he replaced almost all the wingers and center forwards in his hands in a short period of time, if you count Lin Liangming, who temporarily played fullback, there were 5 strikers on the field at the same time, but they still couldn't knock on the opponent's door, and could only suffer the first defeat of the season at home embarrassingly.
Therefore, what the team has to do now is not to think about what formation to play, because whether it is a back 3 or a back 4, the core of wanting to win is to be able to score first, which cannot be done, and even if you want to draw the opponent, it may only be a good wish. On Saturday night, Guoan will travel to old rivals Shanghai Shenhua, who are currently top of the league with a staggering 13 goals.
Text/Beiqing Sports Zhang Kunlong