No Longer Invincible
We suffer our first league defeat
Please note that you can find the latest standings and selected statistics on this splash page.
No Longer Invincible
I felt good going into this match.
I felt awful coming out of it.
We were horrible. We lost to Wuhan, 1-0, and didn’t look even close to scoring for the entire match.
It looked like it was going to be a bore draw until Pak Myong-Song was sent off for a second yellow card in the 70th minute.
Wuhan scored the only goal of the match a few minutes later.
We need to play better than this. This was completely unacceptable.
Xue Xiaopeng
Perhaps one reason for our poor performance was the fact that we started yet another new youngster.
His name is Xue Xiaopeng, another 17-year-old Chinese kid — this time a defensive midfielder.
We picked up Xue Xiaopeng from Beijing university for only 40,000 RMB, which is an absolute steal in my opinion. He played poorly in that Wuhan match, though at least he wasn’t sent off.
He’s another kid with a great personality who is a very consistent performer. I’m convinced that he’s going to be a star in the future. And I don’t think we can place all the blame on his shoulders.
Dandong Tengyue
We’re going to do more squad rotation in this next match, which comes only 3 days after our defeat.
We’ll be at home again, and are clear favorites to beat Dandong. My only concern is that we keep putting out teams of players who have no experience playing against each other.
We have to rotate, though. We play Shandong again three days after this in the first round of the Chinese FA Cup. We can afford a defeat or two in the league, but we really can’t afford a defeat in that cup.
Please note that you can find the latest standings and selected statistics on this splash page.