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Nottingham Forest 1-0 Arsenal (war communiqué)

Titan sports’s all-media correspondent in Britain, Liu Chuan.

In the last round, Arsenal lost 3-0 to Brighton at home. The prediction given by the English media is that Manchester City will lock the league title after this round of game against Chelsea. However, at that time, the outside world obviously overestimated the current state of the arsenal. As a result, Arsenal, who took the lead on Saturday, lost to Nottingham Forest 0-1 away, not only "assisted" the latter to avoid relegation, but also completely sent Manchester City to the throne.

Arsenal have only won two games in the last eight rounds. The media bluntly said that as a champion team, the performance in the final stage was not even above the passing line. Arteta tried to change the formation in this game. Ben Wright, Kiviol and Gabriel partnered with three central defenders, while Zaka, Thomas and jorginho started in midfield. When the team was in a state of non-high oppression, Thomas retreated to the right defense line to participate in the defense. This strange change of formation has caused many English media to adjust their coverage of Arsenal’s starting formation several times after the opening. Pat neven, a famous Scottish player, said that he couldn’t understand this trial array at all. "You will find that quite a few players are in unfamiliar positions, especially when you find that neither side of Arsenal’s defense is a full-back, and the real left-back Thirny is sitting on the bench. You don’t know how he feels when he looks at Ki viol in his good position."

Arsenal quickly conceded the goal in the 19th minute, and Awoniyi, with Ramsdale attacking before and Gabriel chasing after, sent the ball into an empty net before the two men finished the attack, 1-0! The subsequent multi-angle slow motion shows that Gabriel actually put the shovel before Avonii’s foot and touched the ball, but this tackle made the ball refract to the arch of the Nigerian striker impartially, helping the opponent to push the ball comfortably into the empty goal.

The defeat in Nottingham was Arsenal’s first consecutive defeat in the league this season. Unlike losing to Brighton in the last round, they had nearly 90 minutes to change the situation when injury time was included in this game, but in the end, the gunman held 82% possession of the ball, but the audience only shot three shots. The actual injury time in the second half was as long as 8 minutes, and Nottingham Forest was almost torn by the pressure of relegation. Many home fans in the stands were afraid to look straight at the stadium after 80 minutes and chose to bury their heads and pray for the team.

Even in this case, Arsenal’s performance was criticized by the media for lack of urgency, as if they were the leading side. BBC reporter gary ross is puzzled by Arsenal’s slow pace. "Those who don’t know the score may think that Arsenal are leading 1-0 now and are patiently seeking the second goal to seal the victory. But the fact is that even the fans with good temper probably can’t accept the team’s withdrawal from the league title competition in this way. I’m afraid even Manchester City didn’t think of it, because after they beat Everton last Saturday, they were tied with Arsenal for the first time in quite some time, and the gunners actually collapsed immediately."

Even so, Arsenal fans who went out with the team still sang Super mikel arteta in the stands when the game was about to enter the injury time stage. Although the game is still not over, everyone seems to have accepted the reality that the championship will fall short in advance. Simon Stone, a famous BBC reporter, believes that Arsenal’s performance is still good throughout the season, but this time it is a monster-like terrible team that competes with them for the championship trophy. "You can hear the songs of Arsenal fans, and they still firmly support Artta, because in any case, they will all win the second place in the league with league points that were unimaginable at the beginning of the season. They have not been able to compete with Manchester City, but Arsenal is still the club closest to Guardiola’s terrorist team in the league."

With the final whistle of referee Anthony Taylor, Nottingham Forest successfully relegated, while Manchester City completed the great cause of three consecutive league titles and won five Premier League titles in the last six seasons. Some fans ridiculed that even Manchester City players probably didn’t expect the suspense of the league title to be announced so soon. "Considering the schedule of the last two weeks, after defeating Everton last week, Guardiola probably thought that Arsenal would beat Brighton first, narrow the gap at the top of the list to 1 point again, and then beat Nottingham Forest today, and rushed back to the top of the list briefly with the advantage of many games. Therefore, Gua Shuai’s schedule of winning the league within Manchester City is mostly around next Wednesday, that is, after the make-up match against Brighton. He may think that only then can they establish enough advantages in the standings to lock the league title. No one expected that Arsenal would lose two games in a row and take the initiative to go out. "

For Arsenal, this means that they have occupied the top spot for 248 days this season, but in the end they lost the title. This also set an embarrassing record for the top leagues in England: the non-champion team that stayed at the top for the longest time. Coach Artta first congratulated Manchester City for successfully defending the title, and then took the initiative to take the responsibility of losing. "We must first congratulate Manchester City for defending the title again, but for us, this is a sad day. The team should face the reality now. Today, we lost the ball first, and then we didn’t show enough excellent performance to turn the situation around. According to today’s game situation, even if we are given another three hours, we may get nothing. This is my responsibility and I will take the initiative to bear it. We have worked hard together for this (championship) for 11 months, but we haven’t done enough. This is football. The pain is very intense, but we must find a solution to improve the performance of the team as soon as possible. This season is not over yet, and there is still a harsh week ahead. "

As a famous player in Arsenal, Adams, the old captain of Arsenal, frowned after the game. He believed that the team eventually lost to the lineup gap with Manchester City. "Arsenal can only base itself on its own resources. When some (main) players decline, they obviously can’t come up with effective emergency alternatives. Of course, their overall performance this season has been excellent. Saka is likely to win the best young player award of the season, but by the end of the season, this feeling of falling apart is really embarrassing. "

In the history of the World Cup, the bipolar status of Europe and South America is unshakable. At present, all the World Cup champions come from these two regions, while teams from other continents, not to mention winning the championship, have not even stepped on the final venue yet. Relatively speaking, Asia and Africa are relatively close. There are more countries in both continents, and the number of World Cup places is similar. Africa has five and Asia has 4.5. That is to say, if Asian teams are lucky, winning the transcontinental play-offs will make the number of Asian and African teams in the World Cup the same.

So, who has the better World Cup performance in Asia and Africa in history?

Of course, we don’t need to calculate the total score or total goal data of all Asian teams and African teams in history, just look at the results of key nodes. Specifically, look at the teams on two continents, the number of times the group advanced, and the best results.

In these two aspects, Asia and Africa actually tied.

Historically, both Asian teams and African teams have been promoted 11 times. Of course, it needs to be said here that Asia in football refers to the AFC, so Australia is also counted as an Asian team.

Let’s list the specific situation below. In the history of the World Cup, African teams promoted by the group included Morocco in 1986, Cameroon in 1990, Nigeria in 1994, Nigeria in 1998, Senegal in 2002, Ghana in 2006, Ghana in 10 years, Nigeria and Algeria in 14 years and Senegal and Morocco in 22 years. A total of 11 times.

As for Asian teams, Japan has four times, South Korea has three times, North Korea and Saudi Arabia each once, and Australia twice. It happened to be 11 times. I am ashamed to say that this data, if Australia did not join the AFC from Oceania, then Asian teams actually lagged behind African teams.

Let’s look at the best results. Originally, South Korea reached the semi-finals in the 2002 World Cup and won the fourth place, which was once the unattainable achievement of second-rate teams such as Asia and Africa. But FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and Morocco have also achieved this. And to tell the truth, Morocco, the fourth place, is more convincing than South Korea in those days. Everyone knows this, and there is no need to start talking about it.

Therefore, in terms of the best results of the World Cup, Asia and Africa also tied.

So, which side of the world cup is better? There is a data that Africa is dominant, and with this data, we can say that African teams have higher ceilings and stronger ability to work miracles than Asian teams.

In fact, the data of the previous group promotion times is very general. After all, reaching the top 16 and reaching the top four are both group qualifying, but the gap between these two results is not small. So we might as well break it down again-the number of times we scored in the top eight.

In this regard, Africa is far better than Asia. Because Cameroon in 1990, Senegal in 2002 and Ghana in 10 years all reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup, and the number of quarterfinals was three times. What about Asia? It is still zero.

It should be noted that in the 1966 World Cup, North Korea reached the quarter-finals, but at that time, the World Cup was only 16 teams. Therefore, the quarter-finals of North Korea should be strictly called the first round of the knockout round, but it is actually the same level as the next sixteen. You know, Cameroon, Senegal and Ghana reached the second round of the knockout round, so North Korea, the quarter-finals, is not included in this data.

In today’s scale, reaching the quarter-finals means that the group will go further than the group. If it’s a miracle to beat the Asian and African teams into the knockout stage, then the miracle of the quarter-finals is certainly higher than the miracle of the quarter-finals. In fact, if we take away the controversial semi-final result of South Korea in 2002, we will find that the upper limit of Asian teams in the World Cup is not high, and the best result so far is the first round of elimination. So at this point, there is still a gap between Asian teams and African teams.

Of course, judging from FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022’s performance, Asian teams seem to be better than African teams. I hope there will be an Asian team in the future that can break through the long-standing ceiling.