I am the king of football

Chapter 80 Hull City's New Goal

After beating West Ham United in a thrilling manner, Hull City was not able to pull away from the rest in the league standings. With 45 points in league games, they are still unable to get far away from the rivals chasing them.

Although West Ham United, who were third in the league, were kicked down hard by them, Southampton, who were second in the league, also had an amazing record. After 36 league games, they had 9 wins, draws and losses, accumulating points and ranking second in the league, only points behind Hull City.

With 9 rounds left in the long Championship season, these points are not enough to guarantee the league's half-time championship. Bruce and his team are well aware of this, so they had a very serious talk after the team gathered at the stadium again.

"Our goal now is no longer to reach the promotion play-offs, but to firmly grasp the qualification for direct promotion."

At the beginning of the season, when talking with his players, Bruce never thought that the team would be able to occupy the top spot for such a long time. In his estimation, the team's overall strength was only at the upper level of the league, and it was hard to say whether they could make it to the promotion play-offs.

But now, with the arrival of two extremely successful signings, Qin Hu and Kane, everything is different. For the first time, Bruce stood in front of the whole team and changed the team's goals.

"Our goal is to at least stay in the top two of the league until the end of the season."

Tearing off the paper with the promotion target printed on it that had been posted on the team's public notice board, Bruce vigorously pasted a new target upwards.

“Are you sure you can do it?!!”

"have!!!"

Bruce did not talk about winning the championship when the season was not even halfway through. The schedule, which is eight rounds longer than that of the Premier League, means that almost all teams in the Championship will face a problem - a decline in form at the end of the season. He does not want to put too much pressure on the players.

After this conversation, the team's training atmosphere became lively again. Being in a winning team and stumbling around winning and losing are two completely different feelings. At least now the Hull City players are in excellent competitive form.

This excellent form allowed Hull City to quickly recover to the point where all players were available after five days of training, and Bruce satisfactorily arranged the starting lineup for the new round of the league.

The combination of Qin Hu and Kane as double strikers appeared in the team's 442 formation, with midfielders Cavelli and Cooper on the left and right, Collen and Paul on attack and defense, four defenders including Dudgen and Rosenior, central defender combination Maguire and Coulson, and goalkeeper Gulas.

After more than a dozen rounds of the league, Hull City's main starting lineup has been roughly determined. Only in the central defender position, due to his unstable performance, Coulson has to rotate with Chester and Hobes.

When such a full main lineup faced Derby County, which was only ranked ninth in the league, the huge gap in strength forced the home team to shrink back and defend, even though the game was played at their home ground.

Derby County, who played in a 451 formation, held on for more than minutes, which shows that they still have a certain level of strength to be ranked at the bottom of the league.

Unfortunately, after Qin Hu received a pass from Cavelli outside the penalty area and shot a world-class goal to open the home team's goal in the 66th minute of the game, there was no longer any objection to their holding on the bus.

In the 433th minute of the game, after Derby County replaced two forwards and changed to a formation and launched a crazy counterattack in an attempt to equalize but failed, Hull City seized the loopholes in their defense.

It was a through pass from Collen after a successful breakthrough. Kane, who was running forward, got the ball behind the opponent's defense. The British rising star used a low shot to help the team knock on the opponent's door for the second time. 2-0, Hull City easily defeated their opponents away from home and took all three points. After the game, their league points reached 48 points.

Unfortunately, their direct rivals Southampton also performed well in this game. The Saints defeated Brighton 3-0 at their home ground, and their striker Bernard scored twice in the game.

As a result, the gap between the two teams remained the same, which made the celebration of the Hull City team after winning not so crazy.

Some things will not have any impact on you when you don’t know about them, but once you know of their existence, they will really be like a thorn in your throat.

As the first half of the league draws to a close, there will inevitably be a battle between Hull City and Southampton, and perhaps that battle will determine the winner of the half-time league championship.

After the game, Hull City also took a day off to let the players rest. After the holiday, Bruce began to analyze the problems the team had in the previous game to the players.

Ever since the team lost to Barnsley and was almost reversed by West Ham United, coaches of other Championship teams began to study the content of these two games in detail, and gradually came to the conclusion that they should target Hull City's midfield.

In the match against Derby County, the reason why Hull City failed to open the game for more than 60 minutes was because Collen was subjected to extremely high pressure.

Paul does not have the ability to organize and coordinate, and as an engineer, the help he can provide to Colen is limited. If it were not for Qin Hu's personal ability to help the team take the lead in knocking on the opponent's door, this game would definitely not have been won as easily as the score shows.

But the problem is that Hull City does not have a second player who can become the core of the midfield. Although Kane has played as a central midfielder several times, he is still a striker after all. It is impossible for him to always sacrifice his better goal-scoring ability to serve the team.

In this case, Bruce can only choose to train Evans as a substitute for Collen as much as possible, but this is not something that can be done casually. There is naturally a reason why Evans is a substitute.

"Help Coren share the pressure as much as possible. Everyone needs to develop the ability to pass the ball forward. I know it's difficult, but we have to do it."

After discussing with the coaching team, Bruce began to arrange for the team's midfielders to start collective extra training. The coach in charge of midfield training and captain Collen personally guided the team's training goals, and the team's training goals had a new direction.

As for the forward group, since Qin Hu has gained more and more talents, his performance in various trainings has become more and more outstanding. In addition, he has a player like Kane who is also a top talent by his side. The two of them continue to learn from each other and communicate in training, and their progress is very obvious.

Under Qin Hu's personal demonstration, Kane's heading ability has become better and better, which has made up for a shortcoming of this young player who is used to ground offensive. Qin Hu has learned a way of playing that is more suitable for him from Kane.

Don't underestimate this point. After all, the talent card brings Qin Hu other people's experience. Only by constantly integrating and finally condensing it into his own thing can Qin Hu's ability be truly brought to its fullest.

Whether it is shooting in the penalty area or the technique of the Foot of God, Qin Hu has gotten a lot of inspiration from Kane, and now he has more and more of his own style.

Chapter 2 is here! It’s the last month of the new book period, please recommend and collect it~


(End of this chapter)