Godfather Of Champions

 The second half was just like what Twain said, Arsenal continued the performance of the later part of the first half, attempting to rip through Forest’s defense through quick passing.

After Twain’s criticism during halftime, George Wood became more energetic in the second half. Fàbregas wanted to keep everything under his control, just like the first half, but he realized it was not so easy anymore.

Wood’s man-marking was very impressive as he ran after Fàbregas as if he did not care about his stamina. As for the defense behind him, he left it to Gago. Forest was leading by one goal anyway; it did not matter if they sacrificed Gago’s attacking prowess. The key was to freeze Fàbregas out completely.

“Fàbregas receives the ball and he wants to pass it… Ah! Wood’s tackle is very timely, he poked the pass from Fàbregas away!”, the commentator said.

Fàbregas reacted very quickly after seeing his pass got poked away by Wood, moving to recover the ball immediately. Too bad Wood was faster than him as he blocked the Spaniard off with his body and cleared the ball.

Fàbregas was a little pissed as he gave Wood a shove from behind, but he could not move Wood at all of course. He did however, provoked Wood to turn back and look at him expressionlessly.

After that, Wood played as if he was stuck to Fàbregas.

Fàbregas changed his strategy when he realized that Wood was only making use of his exceptionally strong body to challenge for the ball. He stopped passing the ball straight after receiving it, instead, he controlled the ball, made a few feints before passing the ball.

It worked well initially as Wood’s inertia thinking allowed Fàbregas to skip past him easily, however, it did not work afterwards.

Wood had an ace up his sleeve.

He still went in for the tackle, but he kept a trailing leg behind and did not push his center of gravity forward totally. Fàbregas thought he got past Wood and as he adjusted his body in preparation for the pass, he lost his balance all of a sudden and fell to the floor.

Upon second look, he was tripped by Wood’s trailing leg.

He raised his hand to indicate that he had been fouled by Wood and the referee’s whistle rang out as he wished.

Wood made no appeals to the referee regarding his foul. He did not even give Fàbregas a hand up before running back to defend.

Fàbregas pushed himself up. Wood’s foul was not vicious, but it caused Arsenal’s attack to break down. Fàbregas felt helpless regarding the foul, he was already used to this after numerous face-offs with Wood.

Only when taking the free-kick, could he experience the freedom without Wood’s disturbance at his side.

Later, Wood used every methods in his repertoire to make things exceptionally difficult for Fàbregas… Fouls, cheeky moves, legal shoulder charges — even though he was not totally frozen out by Wood, he had to dedicate a huge amount of energy to go against Wood, causing his passing accuracy to drop till it was much lower than the first half, leading to a sharp decline in his contribution to the attack’s build up.

Not only that, he exhausted so much energy in the battle with Wood that he was panting in exhausting after that.

On the other hand, Wood was not even panting or flushed, everything was just as per normal. His physical attributes were so good that they were a source of hopelessness for his opponents.

Because of Wood’s sudden good performance, Arsenal had no choice but to leave the task of building up their attack to Wilshere.

The one defending Wilshere is Gago. In terms of defensive abilities, he was two levels below Wood.

As the one who could organize an attack the best amongst the midfielders of England’s younger generation, Wilshere was able to have quite a bit of space to perform under Gago’s watch as he gave three beautiful passes. It was a pity that the other Arsenal players were not able to take their chances.

Wilshere’s good performance meant the praises that the commentator gave Fàbregas were passed to him.

“It’s no wonder he’s being lauded as the most creative and technical midfielder in England after Gascoigne! He’s simply too much for Gago to handle! People say that Wenger has a habit of selling his players once they are past 30 years old. Fàbregas will be 27 years old soon, perhaps it’s time Wenger seriously consider about using Wilshere to replace Fàbregas’ position in the team…”, he said.

Arsenal’s high-tempo attack only stopped for a little before starting again. However, the focal point this time changed from Fàbregas to Wilshere.

The Forest goal was in danger again. Twain muttered as he sat in his seat, “Two focal points huh?”

He thought for a while. Fàbregas is getting exhausted very quickly under the torment of Wood, he won’t be able to recover so quickly. Wilshere is indeed talented, it is a rather difficult for Gago to mark him… Wilshere is the leader of England’s midfield in future after all.

This won’t do, we must stop Wilshere.

He walked to the side of the field and took a deep breath.

“George!!”, he shouted.

His voice was really loud… Maybe it was to cooperate with him, at that moment, the songs in the City Grounds suddenly became softer.

Wilshere suddenly felt a chill.

After that, Twain went back to the manager’s seat and Wilshere realized that the person standing in front of him had changed to George Wood…

Wilshere was a little overwhelmed as he turned back to look for his captain, Fàbregas. However, what he saw was Fàbregas bending over, panting heavily, and Gago standing beside him.

He had a bad feeling about it…

The commentator deeply understood that Wilshere was still some distance away from Fàbregas from the match afterwards… He did not mention anything about replacing Fàbregas with Wilshere anymore.

Under the close marking of Wood, Fàbregas was still able to pass the ball out to his teammates. Even though the success rate was lower than the first half, he still managed to pass the ball. Under the marking of his international teammate, Wilshere found it difficult to even get the ball. Under the physical challenges from Wood, he always lost the ball very easily.

Fouls, cheeky moves, physical challenges bordering on the lines of being unreasonable…

Wood did what he did against Fàbregas to Wilshere.

Wilshere conceded defeat before long. He did not dare to allow the ball to stay at his feet for too long, passing it to Fàbregas after receiving the ball. Without any instructions from Wenger, he returned the position of the focal point back to his captain.

Seeing that Wilshere had admitted defeat, Wood went back to mark Fàbregas.

After a long day’s work, Arsenal’s attack did not get better. Their bark was worse than their bite as they did not get any goals. The score was still 1:0, with the home team Forest in the lead.

Nottingham Forest pushed out for a while to fight for the ball, but drew back after seeing that the second half had more than half way more to go.

This change took Wenger by surprise. He had analyzed Tony Twain in detail, and he knew that Twain would never choose to defend when his team had only a one-goal lead. He would choose to keep attacking until they got another goal. Why were they defending when the score was only 1:0? And Forest did not seem to be in a disadvantageous situation on the field. Could they be giving up the opportunity to widen their lead just like this?

Twain had his own difficulties. He knew that Wenger wanted to break his team down using this high-tempo game because he used it on others before. That was why he decided to go with a defensive tactic to conserve some energy since they were already in the lead.

At the same time, he started to use his substitutes. Cohen coming on for Fernández and Moke for Bentley.

“Defend and counter!”, the commentator blurted out when he saw this in the commentary box.

It was too familiar, so much so that they could imagine how the match would go even with their eyes closed.

Nottingham Forest would defend in their own half, disturbing Arsenal’s defense line occasionally. Arsenal would surround the Forest penalty area. However, with a lack of good scoring opportunities… the time would just go by quietly.

Reality was not much different.

When Nottingham Forest drew back to defend, it made things difficult for Arsenal. Their impressive passing was ineffective when the Forest players were all crowded around the penalty area.

Wenger understood that they would be the one at a disadvantage should they continue surrounding the penalty area — Nottingham Forest only needed a counterattack and they might score another goal.

When he thought about this, he adjusted the team’s tactic. Instead of surrounding the penalty area, they started to build from behind and push forward slowly. They did not rush to put the ball near the Forest goal, forcing Forest to come out.

Forest then attacked reservedly without much enthusiasm. Defense was still their top priority.

The match went by very quickly when the two managers were engaged in a battle of their wits. In the blink of the eye, it was already in the 80th minute.

Now, Wenger was faced with a choice, should he let the match end just like this, or should he try for a goal in the final ten minutes.

Even if Arsenal lost the first round 0:1, it was acceptable. After all, it was just a goal’s difference, they could still turn it around when they were at their home ground.

If he went for it and got an away goal, the score would be 1:1. The team would already have a foot in the semifinals.

Both results seemed to be not bad…

Wenger fell into a deep thought.

The pro of the first choice was that the result for this match would be guaranteed. It looked like Nottingham Forest had no energy to go for another goal. If Arsenal was just looking for a slender defeat of one goal, it would not be a problem. The con was that whether they would advance to the next round would be based on the unpredictable future, that was not guaranteed.

The pro of the second choice was that he would be in control of his team’s fate after the first round. The con was that it was a real possibility that they would concede a goal instead of scoring. Even though Wenger had been researching Twain for many years, there was one aspect that he could never figure out. That was Tony Twain’s unpredictability. This person’s character had no pattern to speak about, and it was the same with his actions. He could not tell whether the exhausting that Forest showed earlier was a show with an intention of luring him to press forward… and then they would be successful in their sneak attack.

Just when he was unable to make up his mind, Twain made another substitution.

Wenger turned his head to check it out. The person getting his boots checked by the fourth official was Aaron Mitchell who was more than two meters tall.

And the person he was replacing was…

The fourth official lifted the electronic board:

Number 15 Nuri Şahin off. Number 9 Aaron Mitchell on.

Wenger uttered a “cunning” in his heart. If he had adjusted his tactics earlier and his team started to attack, Twain’s move now was obviously prepared for him. Removing an attacking midfielder and introducing a tall center forward would increase Forest’s attack. Simple and crude tactics such as going down the flanks to cross or long ball tactics were surprisingly effective during the last few minutes of the match.

Looks like Twain himself could not keep his cool anymore, he wanted to increase the lead at the end…

This change made Wenger decide to defend. Arsenal would rather lose the away match by a single goal than to let the one-goal defeat turn into a two-goals defeat at the last moment.

In the final ten minutes, the situation on the field turned right on its head. Forest were actively attacking while Arsenal fell back in defense. It was just as Wenger expected, Twain’s team went for high balls all the way in the last ten minutes. The crosses kept going towards the Arsenal goal, keeping Almunia and the Arsenal’s defense busy. There was also once where there was a dispute when Mitchell fell in the penalty area. The Nottingham Forest players were adamant that the Arsenal players fouled Mitchell when defending whereas the Arsenal players believed that that was nonsense. How could someone as tall as Mitchell fall so easily with just a touch? It must be a dive!

Both sides were caught in an argument and the Arsenal players had the intention to waste time. The referee made a final decision. This was neither a foul nor a dive. Ears piercing boos rang out from the stands.

Until the last second, the barrage from Nottingham Forest did not achieve any results. The commentator blamed it on their late burst. They only thought about attacking during the last ten minutes, that was too late. However, you could bare see any expression of unhappiness on Twain’s face. It seemed like he was very accepting of this 1:0 result.

When he shook hands with Wenger, there was a smile on both their faces. The friendliness made it seem like what just ended was not the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals, but a preseason friendly.

“See you at home, Tony.”, Wenger said as he extended a “warm invitation” to Twain.

Twain just smiled and said nothing.

When the match ended, Wilshere hesitated for a while and he decided to ask George Wood to exchange jerseys. Even though he was marked out of the game during the match, as fellow England players, he still looked up to Wood. What made him hesitate was that he knew Wood had a weird temper and he especially disliked exchanging jerseys.

But just when he finally decided to look for Wood to exchange jerseys, he was shocked to see that Fàbregas had already beaten him to it.

After the Arsenal captain made a gesture to exchange jerseys in front of the Nottingham Forest captain, Wood took off his jersey and passed it to him without saying anything.

It was so straightforward that Wilshere was dumbfounded.

When Fàbregas came back after exchanging jerseys, Wilshere approached him and asked in surprise, “Didn’t they say that he…”, he pointed at George Wood who was walking away, “doesn’t like to exchange jerseys with his opponents?”

Hearing this, Fàbregas looked surprised too as he asked, “Who told you this?”

“Er… Everyone says so.”, Wilshere replied. He did not know where the rumor came from, but he had this impression.

Looking at him, Fàbregas laughed, “He’d only refuse to exchange jerseys if Forest lost.”

Wilshere breathed a small sigh of relief.

Fàbregas read his mind as he patted him on the head and said, “Don’t be so happy Jack. You won’t have anymore chance this season.”

“Ah?”, Wilshere did not understand.

“We’ll win the two remaining matches.”, said Fàbregas confidently as he walked away with Wood’s jersey on his back.