A Fluke?
Part 25 | Yanbian FC | 延边足球俱乐部 | 연변축구 | FM23 Hardcore Mode
Tianjin
I didn’t sleep at all the night before this one.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw visions of Hou Yu letting in 4 goals to Qingdao Hainiu in our last Chinese FA Cup match.
I decided to start him anyway.
We were at home this time around. It was an evening game, played in -4 Celsius conditions — a little bit too cold for football, in my opinion. Of course, it’s only going to get colder as the winter moves along. We’re only in early November, after all.
Lee Jin-Yong got another start, though he was only able to give us a single half before he was too tired to go on. Of course, Charlotte had the official Yanji Lee Jin-Yong fan club out in full force, which accounted for a significant percentage of the 24,000 in attendance.
I’m pretty sure I was more nervous than any of the boys. They were limber and stretching, and I was in the bathroom throwing up.
Even Chairman Guo didn’t seem all that nervous. He watched the entire match from his private box, smoking a thick, leathery cigar, and flashing me a smile and a wink from time to time.
It only took 18 minutes for Luciano Parra to give us our first goal, which was a header from close inside the penalty box.
Guo Yi followed that up with a goal in the 24th minute, another shot from close range.
And, amazingly, it turned out that those two goals were all that we needed. We came out victorious, winning 2-0.
The truth is that we dominated the match. Our xG was 2.30, which dwarfed Tianjin’s pitiful 0.20. We had 55% of the possession, and we had an amazing 19 shots to their 3.
I suppose I should be happy with Hou Yu for the good performance, though I honestly think it was due to our defense more than to any contribution on his part. I mean, he only faced 3 shots all game.
A win is a win, though — and I’ll take this kind of win any day.
A Fluke?
Tianjin Manager and Director of Football Yu Genwei was back in the press after this one, telling anybody and everybody that they would have won the match 9 times out of 10.
I was tempted to set the record straight in the papers, but decided not to play that game with him.
Mark my words, though — we will ensure that Tianjin knows how good we are when we eventually face them again.
Our next Chinese FA Cup opponent is none other than Jiangsu FC, who just so happen to be in our league.
You might remember what happened the last time we faced them. Jiangsu managed to score 2 goals against us, one of which was an own goal by Aidan Quinn. Wu Ping was in goal that day, and our squad was a lot different.
However, we still are in danger of losing.
We’ll travel down to Nanjing for that match on January 2nd, right after the transfer window opens. That’s going to be an absolutely wild affair.
Certain Victory
Our next league opponent is Yantai Yintai, who are in last place and haven’t won a match yet this season.
We’re going to win this match. I mean, the bookies have Yantai at 100-1 odds, for crying out loud. There is simply no way that we can lose this one.