Matchday 6 Review : Shaanxi Zhongxin Early in the

Poor Lee!  With all the pressure on his team, this is just about the time fans will take a serious look at him and start questioning his managerial prowess.  In reality, we aren't that bad off through our 6 league matches and 4 Champions League ones, however expectations were a lot higher at the start of the year and inconsistent play has been killing us.

Lee can only seriously be blamed for his coaching errors, like not putting a taller defender on the pitch against Ulsan during Matchday 3.  This week, Lee had to deal with a highly depleted lineup, having Huang Bowen out for 3 months is bad, but Tao Wei missed the match with an injury as well and Yang Hao was out with a fever.  Guoan's lineup looked far different from what we've seen most of the season, with Sui Dongliang and Wang Hao both featuring in the lineup for the first time this year.  Further, missing Tao or Huang is okay, but missing both is extremely tough as there is a lack of creativity in the midfield.

That, and the nearly 40,000 screaming fans that showed up in Xian made for a very tough environment for Guoan.  Shaanxi was in control of the game early and was able to put together a number of great chances, getting unlucky a few times, before finally putting the ball past the keeper in the 17th minute on an unusual play.  The ball was swung in from the left, Paul and a Shaanxi player went up for a header and both missed it when the ball bounced off Zhang Yonghai and fell to a Shaanxi player whose shot on net was headed wide before Wang Erzhuo was left all alone on the back post and knocked the ball in.  

At the half Guoan was lucky to only be down by one and after the game Lee commented about how horrible the first half play was.  A major part of the problem had to be how unfamiliar the midfield was with each other and how they weren't up to match fitness.  Lee took off Wang Changqing at the start of the 2nd half and put Guo Hui on, then took off Sui shortly after that, giving Yan Xiangchuang a chance to work his magic again (unfortunately he wasn't able to).  Guoan had a few chances throughout the game, but nothing that was good enough to equalize.

Where do we go from here?  The first thing, obviously, is to hope that our players get healthy and come back soon, though we should be able to get by without him (them).  In 10 matches in all competitions, we have 3 wins, 4 draws, and 3 losses.  It is still early days in the league and no team has clearly jumped ahead and up to now no team has impressed, it still appears there is not a squad head and shoulders above the rest and that it's not time to seriously freak out, YET.

The China derby is coming up on Friday and Guoan has a few days to recover and prepare.  A packed house at Gongti, a holiday Friday, and best of all, Shanghai coming to town should be enough to motivate the squad.  The quicker we can forget this result the better in an overall crazy CSL weekend.