Gao Shen, in his previous life, saw this passage in Guardiola's autobiography "Another Road to Victory".
Ferguson once told Guardiola that it is best not to coach a team for more than four years.
Maybe after seeing this, many people will sneer.
Damn it, this old boy Ferguson is unkind. He has coached Manchester United for so many years, but he instigated Guardiola not to coach for more than four years. Isn't this outrageous?
In fact, Ferguson was really wronged.
In a sophisticated understanding of Ferguson's words, the real meaning should be that a group of players should ideally not play together for more than four years.
In fact, this kind of saying is not only found in football teams, but also in corporate management.
Freshness.
When you work in the same position for more than four years, even if you are very proficient in business skills, you will lack freshness, which will lead to a lack of passion in the work and just blind repetition.
This is true for one person, and even more true for a group of people.
The final manifestation in a team is that the whole team will be inexplicably wrong.
The players are obviously still the same group of players, and the tactics are still the same, but the team's overall performance is constantly declining.
People will find a lot of reasons, such as physical exhaustion, players losing hunger and honor, etc.
But there is just no way to change it.
In this case, the team usually has two options: reorganize or change coaches.
For example, Klopp's Dortmund.
Many people believe that the season that led to Klopp's dismissal was because Klopp's previous tactics seriously overtaxed the bodies of Dortmund players. Of course, this cannot be said to be without this factor, but it is also a result.
What's the reason?
It's just that this team can't improve any more.
Everyone, including Klopp, clearly sees that this team has a ceiling that cannot be broken through.
From reaching the Champions League final in 2013 and losing to Bayern, to being eliminated by Real Madrid in the quarterfinals in 2014, everyone in Dortmund knows that this team can no longer make breakthroughs without further improving the team's strength.
This realization is very scary.
It will be like a virus, infecting everyone on the team.
This is like a person who cannot see hope and easily becomes depressed and lies down.
So, in the end, all we saw was a completely different Dortmund team from before.
This is no accident.
The reason why Ferguson has been able to coach Manchester United for so many years is that he was able to make a decisive decision to reorganize every time he saw the team showing signs of decline.
So over the years, Manchester United has reorganized every few years.
This is true for strong teams, and it is also true for mid- and lower-tier teams.
In the 2013/14 season, Southampton finished eighth in the Premier League. The results can be said to be quite good, but it is difficult to break through further.
At that time, a group of core players in the team had been playing together since the English League One, and those who joined later joined in the English Championship. They were all very familiar with and understood each other. After the head coach Pochettino led the team to excellent results, he went to Tottenham.
Tenham Hotspur.
At this time, the Saints underwent a large-scale reorganization.
If you carefully study the Saints' operations this summer, it is not difficult to find that they actually make little money.
In the transfer market, they received more than 110 million pounds after selling players such as Luke Shaw and Adam Lallana, but they introduced Mane, Sean Long, Tatic, Pellet, etc.
People spent more than 87 million pounds.
This does not include the salary increase brought about by contract renewal and salary increase within the team.
Here, Southampton's signings are very professional, but that doesn't mean they didn't make mistakes. On the contrary, many transfers worth over 10 million this summer failed to produce the expected results.
But Mane, Tatic, Pellet, Bertrand and other players came out, and everyone automatically forgot about the failure of others.
Through this reorganization, Southampton's performance went further, until the next bottleneck appeared.
On the contrary, if Southampton chooses to retain players and Pochettino in that summer, then it will be another option to strengthen signings in local areas to further enhance the overall strength of the team.
But this will bring a risk: can the existing players maintain their past standards?
Will the new players be able to meet expectations?
This depends on the club's ability to resist risks, especially its ability to resist financial risks.
Maybe some people will say, then I won’t sign anyone or sell anyone, okay?
The answer is impossible.
This kind of stagnant approach has been proved by countless precedents that it doesn't work.
Just like Manchester City this season, Gao Shen made no signings and just sold Adam Lallana.
But in the actual season, Gao Shen is constantly adjusting the team's lineup and starting configuration, and changing various playing styles. All of this is based on the super personal abilities of Manchester City players and the team's strong bench.
Based on thickness.
Among other Premier League teams, which one can do what Manchester City does?
And the reason why I mention this is because the problem Barcelona is facing now is a pool of stagnant water.
In La Liga, they are still the leader and can win with their eyes closed.
In the Champions League, they also performed well, playing almost the same type of style in every game.
The players are still configured in the same way, with the iron triangle of Habaibbu in the midfield, which is untouchable, the defense is Puyol and Pique, Alves and Vargas, and the trident is in front...
It's been a few years and it's still the same thing.
Therefore, it is obvious that the running ability of Barcelona players is declining visibly.
Is it because of the body?
Xavi is 32 years old, and it may be said that he cannot run, but what about other players such as Messi and Iniesta?
To put it bluntly, it lacks freshness, excitement, and excitement.
Many people are surprised, why do men who have beautiful wives cheat?
To put it bluntly, I am just bored and looking for excitement.
The more successful professional players are, the higher their threshold for stimulation is, and the harder it is to mobilize their enthusiasm.
Therefore, many top stars can fight for their lives when they have not received honors and still have pursuits.
But once it was implemented, performance immediately plummeted.
This is human nature.
A similar situation is that in the entertainment circle, financial circle, successful people and other fields, more and more weird things will happen one after another.
To put it bluntly, ordinary people have long been numb to the excitement of playing, and they are constantly looking for higher levels of freshness.
Compared to Barcelona's situation, Manchester City is actually doing relatively well now.
After all, Gao Shen's internal competition leaves no room for players to relax.
If anyone relaxes even a little bit, he will immediately lose his main position.
Coupled with the fact that Gao Shen, a master coach who makes chicken blood, draws big cakes, and pours chicken soup, is in charge, how can the players let go of their anger?
In Gao Shen's view, this is Manchester City's biggest advantage over Barcelona now!
…
The weekend after Barcelona was drawn, the Premier League ushered in the 29th round of the league, but Manchester City's home game against Chelsea was postponed to next Wednesday because they have an FA Cup match at the weekend.
In the FA Cup quarter-finals, Manchester City faces Stoke City at home.
Gao Shen rotated the team, and finally defeated Stoke City 2-1 with two goals from Suarez and Gareth Bale.
The latter's goal scorer was Crouch.
The British senior scored an unconventional goal, leaving the defensive players speechless.
After reaching the semi-finals, Manchester City faced Everton, still playing at home.
This sign is really good.
…
In midweek, in the 29th round of the Premier League make-up, Manchester City faced Chelsea at home.
Di Matteo adopted a strict defense strategy in the away game, while Manchester City made substantial rotations.
The two sides played in a very stalemate, but Manchester City took advantage of passing and controlling the ball to take the initiative in the game and began to exert force in the second half.
First, Van Persie scored a goal by taking advantage of Essien's passing error.
In the 85th minute, substitute Sturridge assisted Hazard to score another goal, extending the score to 2-0.
In the end, Manchester City defeated Chelsea 2-0 at home.
…
This weekend, the 30th round of the Premier League.
We had just beaten Stoke City in the FA Cup, and a week later our Premier League opponent was still Stoke City.
It was Crouch who scored a goal for Stoke City.
This British veteran really put pressure on Manchester City's defense.
Fortunately, Manchester City came back in the second half and Yaya Toure's goal brought Manchester City a draw away from home.
One to one, both sides shook hands and made peace.
…
After playing Stoke City, he led the team back to Manchester from the away game overnight.
The team's preparations immediately shifted to the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals at Camp Nou.
For Gao Shen, the game against Barcelona is the focus, and the other games are all warm-ups.
After two weeks of analysis and research, Gao Shen and the coaching staff have a complete set of ideas on how to play Barcelona. Especially Gao Shen, he has always been very clear about how to play, but he just needs to further improve the details.
On the third day after returning to Manchester, the team set off for an away game again, this time traveling long distance to Barcelona, Spain.
Speaking of which, this is Gao Shen's first return to Camp Nou after leaving Real Madrid.
The two previous encounters with Barcelona were in the Champions League finals, but this time it was in the quarterfinals.
According to Barcelona technical director Zubizarretta, this time is obviously different.
Yes, it's really different.
Gao Shen felt that this time he could let go and give it a try.
It’s an away game anyway, who’s afraid of whom?
There is an away goals rule in the knockout rounds of the Champions League, which is a strict curse on the home team and encourages the away team to attack more.
Therefore, in the knockout rounds, the visiting team will often play more aggressively than the home team.
On the contrary, in the Champions League final, Gao Shen had to deal with it cautiously and did not dare to fight Barcelona too much.
But the knockout rounds are different. If Barcelona wants to compete with Manchester City in a goal-scoring battle, Gao Shen will welcome it.
If we really fight, it is still unknown who can score more goals.
The Catalan media is on tenterhooks.
In their memory, Barcelona has not been able to get good results against Gao Shen.
The earliest date can be traced back to 2006, when Gao Shen first made his debut. After that, there were two Champions League finals, and Barcelona lost them all without exception.
This time, they hope Guardiola's team can avenge their disgrace at Camp Nou.
