Yang Zexiang was suspended and missed the Shanghai derby, and Shenhua coach Slutsky gave himself a test question

Special correspondent Gan Hui reports On the evening of August 10, Shanghai Shenhua, who had experienced four consecutive visitors, returned to the home stadium of Shanghai Stadium and defeated Nantong Zhiyun, the "deputy squad leader", 5-1, and greeted the "peak derby" with the harbor with a big victory. This is the third "Shanghai derby" of the season, after the first two matchups, Shenhua won the Super Cup, and the first leg of the league was a 1-1 draw.

At present, the two teams are in the top two in the league standings, with Harbour accumulating 63 points and Shenhua 58 points, and the difference between the two teams is 5 points, so this direct dialogue is an out-and-out 6-point battle, which will affect the ownership of the Chinese Super League championship this season to a certain extent.

On August 11, Shenhua announced the ticketing plan for the derby. Compared with the past, the upper floor of the east stand of Shanghai Stadium is open for the first time, so the game on the evening of the 17th will definitely create a new high in the attendance of Shenhua's home stadium.

Before the match with Nantong Zhiyun on the evening of the 10th, the most discussed by the outside world was the use of Amadou, Gao Tianyi, Yang Zexiang and Wang Haijian, who carried 3 yellow cards. In the previous away game against Beijing Guoan, the suspension of Teixeira and Bao Yaxiong affected the team at both offensive and defensive ends, and Shenhua was finally killed by Guoan and suffered its first defeat of the season. Therefore, the outside world is very concerned about whether the head coach Slutsky will "eat a trench and grow wise", hide these players, and avoid some players from missing the derby due to the accumulation of 4 yellows.

Slutsky's thinking is completely different from the outside world, he still pursues his usual principle of employment and substitution, not only the starters sent Amadou, Gao Tianyi and Yang Zexiang, even in the first half of the three-goal lead, basically laid the victory, halftime still did not replace these three players with three yellows. Slutsky explained, "If you always think about insurance, it's very difficult to play. Yellow cards happen and we have a lot of people and a backhand. ”

It wasn't until Slutsky's regular substitution adjustment time (this time in the 67th minute) that the scene everyone was looking forward to appeared, he replaced Amadou, Gao Tianyi and Yang Zexiang with Wang Haijian, Xie Pengfei and Chen Jinyi, but at this time Yang Zexiang had already received a yellow card, and he would accumulate 4 yellows and miss the match against Harbour on August 17.

Yang's suspension could have a ripple effect. After Manafa fractured the distal left fibula, Yang Zexiang replaced him at right wing-back, and now that the latter is suspended, Slutsky has to choose another replacement.

In the first meeting between the two sides in the league this season, due to Manafa's injury, Slutsky pulled Wu Xi to the back line and played a cameo role at right wing-back, which worked well. Wu Xi played as a fullback when he first debuted, and he is still familiar with the position and responsibilities of the fullback, and he has very rich game experience. It's just that when Xu Haoyang changes to defender, and then arranges Wu Xi to the backline, the strength of the midfield will be damaged. The harbor midfield led by Oscar is already very strong, if Shenhua puts Wu Xi and Xu Haoyang in the backline, the dialogue in the midfield may be more disadvantaged, and once the midfield is out of control, the entire battle will be affected.

In the battle with Nantong Zhiyun, after Yang Zexiang went off the field, Xu Haoyang was pulled to the right, and Chen Jinyi, who came on as a substitute, played left fullback, which should be a new attempt by Slutsky to make both Manafa and Yang Zexiang unable to play. At the beginning, Xu Haoyang was transformed into a left fullback, mainly to give full play to his left-footed passing advantages and strengthen the team's left side attack, but as a midfielder, Xu Haoyang is strong in attack and weak in defense, and against a team with slightly stronger overall strength, his relative shortcomings may be magnified. If he is temporarily put at an unfamiliar right wing-back, it will be a bit of a challenge for Xu Haoyang. Chen Jinyi is also stronger in offense than in defense, and the cooperation with other players in the defense line still lacks tacit understanding, facing the harbor with excellent attack power on the side, and sending Xu Haoyang and Chen Jinyi at the same time, the defensive pressure on both sides may be greater.

Shenhua's performance this season is very good, rewriting the team history record again and again, after 23 rounds of league games, the team has 18 wins, 4 draws and 1 loss, accumulating 58 points, temporarily ranking second in the league standings.

Compared with the past, Shenhua has indeed made great progress and improvement, but compared with the opponent Haigang, Shenhua is still slightly inferior in overall strength, especially in terms of foreign aid. Harbour have Oscar, who was introduced for 60 million euros in the Golden Yuan football era, and Vargas, who has been selected for the Argentina national team. These two foreign aides are definitely the top configuration in the current Chinese Super League, and Shenhua's foreign aid configuration has a certain gap with it. Therefore, in the Chinese Super League, where foreign aid can often determine the ceiling of a team, Harbour has super lethality.

The data is enough to prove this. By round 23, Oscar and Vargas had both scored 11 goals, with the former also contributing 18 assists and the latter eight. That said, 48 of Harbour's 80 goals were related to these two, which is about 60% of the total number of goals.

Shenhua's foreign aid was introduced after the Football Association set up an investment cap, which is naturally not the same as the foreign aid introduced in the Jin Yuan era, which also determines that there is a gap in strength between Shenhua and the harbor. Of course, football is round. Although Shenhua is slightly inferior to Harbour in terms of overall strength, it is not uncommon for the weak to defeat the strong on the football field, so Andre, who scored twice in this round, said of the derby: "The importance of the derby is self-evident. For me, I'm going to get in shape and help the team win games. ”