Chapter 10: The Road to the New Season

The day after the Manchester United International Champions Cup tie with Paris Saint-Germain, the Manchester United team flew from Chicago Airport to Manchester International Airport.

After more than ten hours of flight, the plane crossed the Atlantic to the United Kingdom, landing at Manchester Airport.

Manchester is a city all too familiar to Li Qingshan, who spent the most turning two years of his life here.

He looked out of the window on the plane and looked out of the window, and the houses on both sides of the Grand Canal gradually became clear.

This is where his football career started and now he's back here.

As soon as the players walked out of the airport, the Manchester United fans, who had already gathered outside the airport to meet them, immediately became excited.

The players did not rush to leave the airport, but walked forward and boarded the Manchester United bus after meeting the players' requests for autographs and group photos.

As the player who spent the most transfer money in the history of Manchester United Club, Li Qingshan also received a warm welcome from Manchester United fans. And Li Qingshan also has the identity of a former Manchester United player, which also made some Manchester United fans even try to make him a "red ghost" produced by Manchester United's academy.

Of course, such a relationship is obviously very reluctant, but I can't stop some fans from thinking like this.

As a result, Li Qingshan has become the most popular player, and he is even more popular with fans than Rooney, the captain who has been with the team for many years.

The players also did not care about the fatigue of the long journey and fully met the demands of the fans. Manchester United is probably the most commercial club in the world, but in terms of football tradition, because of Ferguson's long-term managerial relationship, Manchester United still maintains a lot of English football tradition.

For example, when it comes to the relationship with the fans, Ferguson requires the players to be friendly with the fans.

Manchester United's fans are also very passionate about their players, and this good relationship between the club and the fans is very evident in the English team. Even those unknown youngsters who have just been promoted from the academy are surrounded by a large number of fans.

But with one exception, that's Di Maria.

Di Maria's words two months ago were a complete offense to Manchester United fans.

At the end of the season, Di Maria was interviewed by Spanish newspaper Marca. In the interview, Di Maria said that Manchester is a very unfriendly city for him, and that his relationship with Louis van Gaal and his lack of belonging at Manchester United have made him want to leave the club urgently.

When he is still a Manchester United player, throwing out such a mess can be regarded as making Manchester United fans very annoyed.

Therefore, even if Di Maria performed well in the warm-up match, there were no Manchester United fans surrounding him at the moment, asking for autographs or group photos.

Di Maria was alone and walked on the team bus alone.

………

With the transfer window still some way to go before the transfer window closes, Manchester United's recruitment and squad slimming work continues. However, it is all about the comings and goings of some fringe players and young players, and it doesn't have much impact on the framework of the team's main players.

Li Qingshan is a new addition to the team at Carrington. Hummels did not go to the United States after the official announcement, but went directly to Manchester for a medical examination and signed a contract.

Kramer has finally found his relatives, and Kramer, who doesn't speak English very well, has been suffocated these days, and there are no Germans in the Manchester United team, and no one speaks German. This made Kramer suffocated.

The arrival of Hummels added a German to United's first team and allowed Kramer to find organisation. Hummels' English skills are very high, and in England, Hummels has no language barrier at all.

So Kramer's big brother in the national team, Hummels, became his translator.

The addition of Hummels has made Ancelotti breathe a sigh of relief, at least in the position of central defender, Ancelotti can finally have a chess piece that reassures him.

The Premier League kicks off on August 8 and Carlo Ancelotti is seizing the last few moments to work on the tactical side.

On the offensive side, the main core is, of course, revolving around Li Qingshan. The main attacking strategy is to use the space between the two wings to make wide crosses. Manchester United's current squad can be described as full of long-term talents. Especially on the central axis, Li Qingshan, Fellaini, Kramer, Hummels and others are all above 190 cm tall, while other players such as Smalling, Phil Jones and other players are also very strong in physical confrontation. Ancelotti therefore naturally wants to play to United's physicality and high ball play, creating as many opportunities as possible for wide crosses and set-pieces.

That's why Carlo Ancelotti had to keep Di Maria. With such a winger, he can use his breakthroughs to create crosses and set-piece opportunities, while the two full-backs, Valencia and Alex Sandro on the other side, have a decent ability to provide assists, and their pace and fitness can also support them in rotation and back and forth.

On the bench, Manchester United also have Ashley. Wingers like Young and Nani, in terms of winger reserves, Ancelotti still has a lot of available players.

Defensively, Carlo Ancelotti relied on three midfielders and a backline led by Hummels to form the cornerstone of the defence.

Due to Carrick's age, Ancelotti did not intend to use Carrick as the main force, but chose Cramer, Herrera, and Fellaini to form a back three, of which Herrera and Fellaini can move forward to the position of the forward midfielder at any time, and both of them have the ability to play central midfield.

As for the attacking organisation in midfield, Carlo Ancelotti intends to hand over the task to Mata. Although he is positioned on the right flank, he can still use his movement to thread the needle through several players in midfield.

The concept of a wide forward has been around for a long time.

The wide midfielder, as the name suggests, is a combination of full-back and bridge style of play, and the representative task of this type of player is to be short and have excellent skills at the feet.

Compared to pure wing-backs and midfielders, full-backs are more flexible in range of motion and positioning, whether they can pull the attack from the flanks, find holes in the opponent's defence with lateral dribbling, and send a cook to a team-mate, or complete a fatal blow.

There is no doubt that Juan Mata is one of the icons of contemporary wing-midfield play. Carlo Ancelotti put him on the flanks and Mata was capable of doing the same.

As the pace of the Premier League approaches, Carlo Ancelotti has gradually established his team's main squad.

Despite spending $200 million on transfers, Manchester United's first team has actually only brought in four new signings. Carlo Ancelotti does not intend to make a major change to the original Manchester United squad, but retains the main framework of it, and only adds fresh blood in some key positions.

It costs a lot of money, but not many people buy it.

However, it is widely believed that Manchester United's recruitment operation this season is undoubtedly quite successful.

First of all, of course, is the introduction of Li Qingshan, which is a scarce product among the current excellent center forwards, and Li Qingshan's existence is almost a guarantee of scoring ability. Manchester United spent a lot of money to bring Li Qingshan back to Old Trafford, fully demonstrating Manchester United's ambition for a revival. This time they didn't raise the price, Ed Woodwood really spent the money!

And the addition of Hummels has also made many people think that this is another proud work of Edwardwood. There is no doubt that Hummels is one of the top centre-backs in the world, and with the introduction of Hummels, Manchester United has world-class players in the central axis of goalkeeper, centre-back and centre-forward. As a result, Manchester United, which originally retired with only dim stars after Ferguson's retirement, seems to have regained the star of his peak.

And in addition to bringing in big-name stars. The signing of two powerful players, Kramer and Sandro, also shows Ancelotti's pragmatism. Especially Sandro, in the face of the competition of many giants, Manchester United successfully won the target, which also shows that Manchester United's signboard is still quite attractive.

Carlo Ancelotti is actually considering whether to bring in another big enough star in midfield to completely establish the entire central axis of Manchester United. But after several trade-offs, he gave up on this plan.

It's certainly not about money, Manchester United's purchasing power is enough for Ancelotti to splurge on. It's that it's too difficult to buy a good enough midfielder right now.

If you're just buying people for the sake of buying people, there's not much need for it.

Carlo Ancelotti believes that Manchester United's current squad is actually competitive enough in the Premier League.

In the Premier League, Manchester United's main opponents are undoubtedly Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, and perhaps the rising Tottenham Hotspur.

Manchester United's record against these five teams last season was actually not bad, with Arsenal and Liverpool beating them twice, and even against Chelsea and Manchester City, United did not show much of a difference in quality.

In fact, in the Premier League, what really determines the title is the consistency of the teams in the middle and lower reaches.

Due to the commercial success of the Premier League, even mid-stream and lower-tier teams have enough money to chase down stars who are worth one or two million. In this way, when the downstream team faces the top team, there are also a few guns in the hand to create a killing opportunity, and after the gap between the strength and weakness of the teams is narrowed, the top team has a lot of things to overturn in the gutter of the downstream team.

Many managers have said in interviews that the Premier League is the most difficult of the top five leagues. There are generally two reasons, in addition to the schedule is too dense, the biggest reason is that there are almost no soft persimmons in the Premier League, even if you want a relegation expert like Sunderland, you can spend 10 million pounds to buy Rodwell. In La Liga and Serie A, there are many downstream teams that are worried about the league transfer fee of more than one million euros, and the financial gap between the two sides is very large. In today's increasingly commercial football games, more money means that you can buy powerful players to strengthen the team's combat effectiveness.

On the one hand, the competition in the league, and on the other hand, several Premier League teams at the top of the standings have also entered the trough because of their different problems, the original Premier League hegemony Manchester United, after the rise of Chelsea and Manchester City, the dominance of the league began to decline, Manchester United's competitiveness declined, Chelsea, Manchester City rose, plus the original strong Arsenal and Liverpool.

Alex Ferguson's retirement seemed like a landmark time, marking the beginning of a chaotic era for the Premier League.

In such a turbulent Premier League, whoever can stabilize the top teams first will be able to avoid losing points against the middle and lower teams.

Last season, Manchester United conceded too many points against teams in the lower middle of the table and finished fourth.

Carlo Ancelotti mainly believes that this is due to the serious decline in Manchester United's attacking prowess due to the aging of Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney.

Last season, Manchester United could control the ball in midfield, but they often couldn't attack for a long time, and finally the opponent hit the counter-attack, and this happened repeatedly.

And this season, the addition of Li Qingshan basically solved the problem of Manchester United's lack of scoring skills to a large extent.

Therefore, Ancelotti's idea is very pragmatic, and the current Premier League as a whole is very chaotic, this is a chaotic world without a ruler. Therefore, what he pursues is to stabilize the team as quickly as possible and play steadily. After all, in such a situation, the more stable the team, the more likely it is to finally lift the Premier League trophy.

Ancelotti, who was sacked by Real Madrid, urgently needs a championship with enough weight to return to the people's eye.

Manchester United's match against Tottenham Hotspur was the opening match of the Premier League's 2015-2016 Premier League season. The game was played a few hours earlier than the others.

In order to take care of the audience in Asia, the Premier League official has greatly advanced the game time, and the match between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur on August 8 will be held at 11:45 p.m. local time! It's almost lunchtime.

Many local fans usually complain about this schedule, but in fact it has an impact on the game.

Many of the Premier League's stadiums are decades old and are not enclosed pitches, so when a football match is played at midday, the sunlight shines directly onto the pitch through the roof of the pitch, creating a so-called "yin and yang field", which can have a negative impact on the sight of the players on both sides of the game, especially the goalkeeper.

But for the sake of money, Premier League officials often arrange a game to be played at noon in each round. Because 11:45 London time is exactly 19:45 Beijing time, in Asia, this is the prime time to watch the game.

Despite the complaints from many fans, Old Trafford was still crowded on matchday.

Li Qingshan is still living in the hotel at the moment, he plans to find a house in Manchester, and he is also preparing to get a driver's license.

It's just that Manchester United have been very busy in training before the start of the season, and he has not had time to spare.

On 8 August, after Li Qingshan got up, he took a taxi from the hotel to the Carrington base. Manchester United's players will be here, in the team's bus, to Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United.

Carrington's training base, six miles west of Old Trafford, awaits players on both sides when the buses carrying United's first team depart from Carrington, where the opening game of the Premier League season is about to begin.