Chapter 56
With the advantage of two goals, Wei Le led the Wolves back to the locker room during the halftime break.
He did not make more adjustments, but gave the players more freedom. He felt that in the general direction, the game was almost over, and the rest depended on the individual performance of the players.
Around the 65th minute, Wei Le replaced Jota with Edwards for the purpose of protecting Jota. After Edwards was substituted, he also seized the opportunity and helped Ziro score a goal with a straight pass.
The score of 3-0 lasted until around the 80th minute of the game.
Reading took advantage of a corner kick to score a goal. This goal was caused by Coady's lack of concentration and communication problems with Jack Pierce, which completely missed the opponent's center forward Komogant.
However, after scoring a goal, the focused Wolves did not give Reading more opportunities. In the end, the score of 3-1 was maintained until the final whistle, and the Wolves got all three points at home as they wished.
Sitting in the position of the home team coach in the press room, Wei Le faced the media's praise with a calm attitude. Yes, it was a bit too peaceful.
"I said that our goal is still to avoid relegation. Just winning two games doesn't mean anything. After all, we are still a weaker team in the league..." Wei Le seemed unmoved. When the reporter asked whether to change the expected goal for this season, he seemed very determined.
This made those journalists who "believe everything they hear and always want to make a big news" very helpless. They all hoped that the head coach of the Wolves would make a declaration of upgrading so that they could write a very topical report.
But they have forgotten that before the start of the season, they were the first to jump out and say that Wei Le's Wolves would not be able to make a big difference. Some people even swore that Wei Le was a relative and that his dismissal was already counting down. But more than a month later, Wei Le is sitting well in his position.
Although Wei Le himself has not experienced many battles, he has studied the characteristics of the media, especially the English media, in depth. He knows very well the means of these "uncrowned kings", which is to praise a team or a player when they are slightly improved, and they are eager to put them on the throne of the world's number one.
But once they decline a little, what awaits them is the bombardment from the media.
It's strange, isn't it?
The reporter who praised the newspaper last week can write a harsh accusation the next week, and the reporter who sympathized with a player's experience yesterday may have criticized him for his misconduct in tears the next day.
How contradictory, but this is the media.
Different head coaches have different ways to deal with the media.
Head coaches like Mourinho are good at using the media in reverse. He often makes very radical remarks in the media before major competitions or other critical moments, sometimes declaring war on a team or player, and sometimes provoking a team coach.
It is undeniable that his purpose was first to divert the media's attention to his war with the outside world and reduce the pressure on the team; at the same time, he used the method of setting up external enemies to make the team tend to unite together.
Of course, a head coach like him sometimes fails to handle media relations well.
For example, in the Real Madrid stage of the 11th season, in order to ease the embarrassing and sensitive relationship in the national derby, Casillas privately made peace with Xavi. This incident made Mourinho very annoyed.
When dealing with Casillas, he criticized Casillas for being weak in the media. He directly bought Lopez from Sevilla to replace Casillas. He directly stated, "Casillas can choose other coaches... As long as I am the head coach of Real Madrid, Lopez is the main force."
In fact, the intensification of this matter was not due to Casillas and Mourinho, but the conflict between Casillas' wife Sara and Mourinho-Sara is a reporter, and she can often get to know the situation in the locker room in advance through Casillas's channel.
After Casillas' initial peace talks, Sala directly revealed in the media that Mourinho's relationship with the players was extremely bad and the locker room was cold as ice.
Mourinho's anger at Sala for privately leaking locker room information was actually greater than his anger at Casillas himself.
In the end, Casillas did not leave, but Mourinho left first.
Wei Le was a rookie and his ability to deal with reporters was actually not enough. He did not quite agree with this "shooting at me" approach. For the media, his approach was to deal with it both inside and outside.
Since the media was so difficult to deal with, Wei Le said:
It's difficult, so don't do it!
For those who canWei Le advocated leaving the interviews he could choose to attend or not; he would mainly deal with the media’s provocations and would not take the initiative to attract trouble. His external image was that of a submissive and kind old man.
Reporters liked this kind and nice young man very much, but what they didn’t know was that internally, his image was completely different.
“Promotion is and must be our goal this season! We have now taken another step towards this goal!” Wei Le pointed to the standings and said that now, after two rounds of the league, Wolves ranked first with 6 points and 5 goals. “This is the first time we have ranked first. I hope we can stay there longer. I don’t want this to be our last time in this position.”
At this stage, the players were all full of fighting spirit, and Wei Le didn’t need to say more encouraging words. On the contrary, what he had to do was to cool down the players, so that they wouldn’t float and concentrate.
Wei Le once asked his counselor to understand that this was the case for young people, and they had to be kept floating at a low altitude at all times.
Wei Le didn't understand it at first, but when he faced this group of energetic twenty-year-olds, he deeply understood the meaning of this sentence.
On August 17, Wolves continued to play at home against Ipswich. Shortly after the start, Ipswich scored a goal with a long shot from outside the penalty area by center forward Daryl Murphy, but Wolves quickly adjusted and seized a corner kick caused by a counterattack opportunity, which was scored by Ruben Dias with a header.
In the second half, Bowen's diagonal pass assisted Jota to score and reverse the score.
The score of 2-1 remained until the end. This time, Newcastle United surpassed Wolves and won the top of the league with a goal difference advantage.
And Wei Le continued to say in the interview that relegation is the team's goal.
On August 20, Wolves visited Birmingham. In this game, Wolves as a whole were not in a particularly good state due to fatigue from the journey, and they were slow to open the situation. Ziro finally created a penalty opportunity, but he missed it himself.
In the 40th minute, Rodri got anxious. He took advantage of the corner kick opportunity and the ball was headed out by the Birmingham center back. He rushed up from outside the penalty area and volleyed the ball. As a result, the ball bounced right at the bottom of the goal and flew into the goal, shocking the whole audience. This goal was also selected as the best goal of this round. Rodri happily went home holding a "thermos cup".
Of course, Wei Le is still in the relegation.
Four days later, Wolves faced the challenge of Cambridge United at home. This was the second round of the League Cup.
And Cambridge United did not pose any threat to Wolves. Rodri continued his excellent form. Both assists were from Jota, who scored twice with his head and feet.
At the beginning of the second half, Doherty's reluctant cross went directly into the goal. This outrageous game situation continued until the end of the game. This time, Joao Teixeira's cross was kicked into his own goal by the defender in an incredible posture.
Now, Wolves entered the third round of the League Cup with a score of 4-0.