Chapter 207: The Premier League Kickoff Part 1
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
By the time July turned into August, Nottingham Forest had quietly withdrawn from the transfer market. While the media was still conjecturing Tony Twain’s next target, the Forest team had completed the formation of the team and set the lineup. The remaining time was spent on preparing for their opponents in the new season.
In order to do this, in addition to the usual training, Tang En refrained from going to the pub every night to drink. Instead, he and Dunn stayed at home to watch the video profiles of all their opponents in the English Premier League. Apart from that of the Forest team itself, they studied the summer transfer data of all nineteen Premier League teams to understand whether their opponents had been strengthened or weakened.
Tang En’s advanced three-year knowledge of the world played an important role at that time. For the summer transfer market, there were many things that no one could be certain of, such as whether a player bought by a team was worth the price, or whether some unknown kid would perform beyond everyone’s expectations. One could also never know which players would exceed their value and which players would not live up to their reputation and become a washout after one season.
However, Tang En knew. He had knowledge of who had made the right purchases and who had made poor purchases.
When he discussed the Premier League with Dunn, he would mention some names, but he would not clarify too much. He was afraid of arousing Dunn’s suspicions. After all, he was from the future; but Dunn just possessed his body, but had remained in the same time period.
Even though they had the same experience and an extraordinary tacit understanding of each other, there would still be secrets that Tang En would not tell Dunn, and that Dunn would not tell Tang En.
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Based on the scores, the twelve-million-or-so pounds that Tony Twain had spent to create the new Forest team was clearly unsatisfactory.
The results of the five friendlies were one victory, two draws, and two defeats. The biggest problem they exposed was that there was not enough rapport in their cooperation, and that their physical strength recovery was less than ideal. There were other conventional issues as well. He discovered that the team lacked techniques when turning defense into offense and did not have the most effective means of attack. Albertini was the midfield core of the Forest team, but he had not completely adapted to English style football; the one word which could sum up his style was “fast.” Fast offense, fast defense, fast to turn defense into offense. Maintaining that fast-paced momentum during an intense confrontation proved to be a bit difficult for Albertini, who was accustomed to Italian football.
Nonetheless, Twain placed a lot of trust in him. Even when it was obvious that he had not played well and had caused the team to lose, he would not criticize the Italian veteran at the post-match press conference. If the reporters pushed the issue, he would state with a serious expression that Albertini was still at the stage of familiarizing with the team, and it was very normal for his state to be unsteady or less than ideal.
He did not doubt Albertini’s ability and competence. The only problem was adapting to the football style, which required time. And he believed that at Albertini’s age, there was no need to spur him on. The player himself would want to prove himself more pressingly than anyone else would.
A veteran as well, Hierro performed quite well on the defense, but due to his age, he had completely abandoned his ability to attack and concentrated solely on defense.
In the friendlies, perhaps the most satisfying player who had just joined the team this summer was Viduka, the Australian striker. After all, whether it was his adaptation to the Premier League, his competition experience, his age, or his skills, he was very much in sync with the Forest team. Compared with the 02-03 season, Mark Viduka’s last season in Leeds United had slightly declined, because he had been affected by the club crisis. In truth, there had been very few players who had still been in the state of mind to think about playing. Despite that, he had still appeared in thirty matches in the League Championship and had scored eleven goals.
Viduka scored three goals in five friendlies, and was the team’s highest scorer in those games. As a result of his outstanding performance, Crouch could only be a substitute for him. And partnering with him was the nimbler Freddy Eastwood.
Nicklas Bendtner and Peter Crouch would be substitutes for the front line. When necessary, Twain would consider rotating, and, in the case of not being able to break through, bringing on Crouch with his unique skill; the tall Bendtner with outstanding headers would also be an excellent choice. After all, their Premier League rivals were more familiar with Viduka and less familiar with Bendtner.
The Forest team’s biggest advantage was not that the players were young, but that they were so unknown to their Premier League opponents. Half of the team was rookies and some of the others had not played in the Premier League before. They needed to adapt to the Premier League, and the other Premier League teams needed to get to know them as well.
In August, the Premier League would have four rounds of matches. The Forest team’s competition schedule was arranged such that the opening match was against a weak opponent, and things would become progressively more difficult. In the first round, Forest would be playing against Blackburn Rovers in an away match. They would return to their home ground in the second round and play against Aston Villa; their opponents’ strength had already begun to rise. The real battle would start in the third round, against the defending champions, Arsenal, on their home grounds! And the fourth round would be an away challenge against Everton.
In reality, the “weakness” of the opponent mentioned earlier was relative. Tang En looked at it, and he did not even think that any of the four opponents were truly weak. Now that they were in the Premier League, any opponent would be stronger than the Forest team. The days when they would just play as they pleased against the lower ranking teams in League One were gone forever.
On August 8, Twain announced a day off for the team, and dragged David Kerslake on a trip to Cardiff, the capital of Wales, to watch a game at his lucky spot, the Millennium Stadium. It was the 04-05 season’s Football Association Community Shield. He was not going as a fan either team. He was there to get a closer look at and understand the Forest team’s two opponents this season.
Tang En dared not flippantly vouch to become the Premiership champion. The English Premier League and League One were two totally different types of tournament; it was almost like they were from two different worlds.
Last season, Arsène Wenger had led Arsenal to create an incredible record of being undefeated in the thirty-eight-game league, and took the title. Although this was not the first unbeaten record in a top English League, it was not easy to remain undefeated for a season in today’s more competitive and intensely confrontational environment. With Arsenal around, would Twain dare to say that he would take the league title this season?
Arrogance did not equate to idiocy. He knew when to be arrogant and when to be low-key.
Arsenal and Manchester United had been the biggest pair of rivals in the Premier League ever since its inception. In the past, the relationship between Manchester United and Arsenal might not have been as tense as it was in the last decade. The man who changed everything was the Gunners’ boss, the Frenchman Arsène Wenger. After winning the Premier League’s first two seasons, Ferguson started to yearn to become the master of his dynasty in the Premier League. Blackburn Rovers was widely considered to be an upstart and flash-in-a-pan team trying to seize the title mid-way, and could not pose any threat to Manchester United. Indeed, in the ensuing season, Manchester United successfully overtook Blackburn Rovers.
In the first five years of the Premier League, Manchester United had won four titles, all of which belonged to Sir Alex Ferguson and his Manchester United Football Club. Just as Ferguson thought that he had established the foundation for his Manchester United dynasty, and the next step was consolidation, the Frenchman, Wenger, arrived. Arsène Wenger, who was still managing a team in Japan, was unknown. Nobody had heard of his name or ability. There were even people who mocked the Frenchman; Britain and France had always been at odds with one another.
And the result? The first season Wenger had come to Arsenal, he had won the Premier League title, and they were named the season’s double crown, having won the FA Cup too. Wenger dealt a blow to the triumphant Ferguson, which had led the two managers and two teams to be nemeses ever since.
Until the end of the 03-04 season and the following six years, the Premier League was basically a power struggle between the two most powerful teams, Manchester United and Arsenal. They both won and lost at different times. Liverpool completely sank into oblivion and Chelsea was not stable enough. With the two traditional goliaths and the two charismatic managers, coupled with their teams heavily marked by the managers’ personal imprint, the rivalry between both sides ran throughout most of the Premier League.
Therefore, whenever these two teams met, it would be explosive both on and off the field, which the spectators and media found immensely enjoyable but was a huge source of worry for the Football Association.
Even though it was a Community Shield game, it was also a battlefield that they were vying for. Tang En earnestly watched the game in the stadium and greedily absorbed everything he could learn: how the two veteran managers made substitutions during the game, their starting lineup, the actual tactics in the game, and so on. The outcome of the competition was secondary.
It was not until the end of the game, when Tang En saw the score, that he realized that the result did not deviate from this period of history in his memory; Arsenal beat Manchester United by 3:1 and won the first championship trophy of the season. Even the players who scored and the way they scored were the same: Arsenal’s Gilberto Silva scored the opening goal for Arsenal and then Alan Smith, who had turned down the Forest team this summer and transferred to Manchester United, scored his first official goal after joining the Red Devils. He helped his team draw the game to a tie. Then the young Spanish player, José Antonio Reyes, helped Arsenal take the lead again, and in the end, Manchester United’s Mikaël Silvestre became Arsenal’s top contributor, scoring a goal which helped Arsenal secured their victory.
After the game, the Arsenal players excitedly picked up the shiny silver trophy plate to celebrate their first championship victory of the season. The Manchester United players left the stadium earlier. They did not want to serve as the backdrop for their opponent’s celebration, with their own loss in contrast to the other party’s joy.
Twain had no interest in Arsenal’s championship celebrations either. He and David Kerslake followed the surge of the crowd out of the stadium and planned to return to Nottingham by car.
The Arsenal fans were still in the stadium, unwilling to leave. They wanted to celebrate victory with their team. Almost all of the crowd leaving now appeared to be frustrated Manchester United fans. Tang En was surrounded by fans wearing Manchester United jerseys. They were silent, and so depressed that their heads were lowered as they hurried home. There were still others, unable to accept the defeat, chattering and arguing with the people around them about the game that had just ended. There was a fat man next to Twain and Kerslake, who had complained to Twain about the unfairness of the result as they exited the stands. Finally, as they were about to part ways, he shrugged and said, “This is good. The Community Shield can be theirs, but the Premier League will be ours!”
