Coaching career started as a college team coach

Standing in the command area marked with white dotted lines at St. James Stadium, Wei Le took a deep breath.

The cheers from outside the stadium lingered in his ears. The Wolves' home stadium, Molineux Stadium, can only accommodate less than 30,000 people, while the 50,000 people at Newcastle United's home stadium, St. James Stadium, seemed more imposing.

But unfortunately, the cheers were not for the visiting Wolves, but for the home team Newcastle United.

The score was clearly written on the big screen hanging on one side of the stadium - 2:0.

Wei Le was very familiar with this score, but according to international practice, the home team was in front and the visiting team was behind. Yes, Newcastle United is now dominating the situation on the field. There is not much time left in the game. If nothing unexpected happens, this will be his first defeat as the head coach of Wolves.

Wei Le initially had great confidence in this game.

After all, considering the strength of the lineup, the media predicted that Reading, which would be directly promoted, was actually defeated by Wolves in the end. Therefore, Wei Le still did not intend to change the previous offensive situation and continued to use the lineup that had been used very well in the past few games.

In this game, the formation is still 4-2-3-1.

Emiliano Martinez is in front of the goal, and the defense line from left to right is left back Ben Godfrey, center back Ruben Dias and Coady, and the right back is Doherty.

On the back line, it is still the combination of Rodri and Jack Pearce, with Jota who is flexible in the attacking midfielder position.

On both sides of the wingers, Joe Mason, who has performed well in training recently, replaced the Portuguese Joao Teixeira on the left wing, and Bowen, who is gradually finding his feeling on the right wing, is still the center forward Ziro, and there is no change in this.

And Newcastle United swept Queens Park Rangers 6-0 in the last game, which is also known as QPR. In this game, Newcastle United's lineup is not much different from the previous game - Congo's tough fighter Mbemba and Nottingham Forest's youth training center back Jamal Lascelles partnered up in the back line.

In the midfield, it is mainly the talented young players Hayden and Shelvey's partnership, Ritchie is the right winger, and the left winger is the Spaniard Ayos Perez. Their positions are closer to the midfield than in the previous game.

The front midfielder uses Diame, who has a large running range and contributed a lot to Hull City's promotion last season, and the center forward is Mitrovic, who is now very familiar to everyone.

Wei Le expected that Newcastle United would definitely press out and attack against Wolves.

"But considering that we have won many games before, won't they be afraid?" Celars once asked Wei Le this question before the game. Wei Le thought about it and felt that it was unlikely.

"Our lineup is not very strong. If they want to get all three points, they will definitely choose to attack in a big way!" Wei Le was very determined, so the coaching staff had no other opinions.

But at the beginning of the game, what Newcastle showed was completely different from what Wei Le had predicted.

Newcastle played very steadily, with basically no low-level mistakes, and unlike some other teams they had met before, they would not make mistakes in passing and give the ball directly to Wolves.

In Wei Le's initial view, Newcastle United's attack was direct. In theory, this game would become an offensive war, and the competition was about whose sword was sharper.

But when Wolves showed their long swords and prepared to attack, he found that Newcastle United wrapped himself from head to toe with a sponge - this was the dilemma faced by Wolves.

The previous direct pass style could not be played, because Newcastle's defense was very solid. Benitez spent nearly five or six months arranging Newcastle's defense to be leak-proof. Everyone had his own defense zone. This kind of responsibility was very fixed, which led to Wolves' direct passes being often intercepted directly.

Ziro played very depressed, and so did Jota.

Wei Le could see that their running positions had actually been studied thoroughly by Benítez, or even if they hadn't been studied thoroughly, Benítez had plenty of ways to deal with them - the magic weapon was the clear division of labor in the regional defense.

At the same time, Benítez's team changed their previous direct offensive style and instead pursued the ball possession rate. Throughout the game, Wolves only had 30% of the ball possession, which made the frontcourt offensive players who had a lot of ball possession play very awkwardly.

If it was just a loss, it would not be a big deal, but shortly after the start of the game, Coady had to use a fierce flying tackle to knock Mitrovic to the ground in order to defend him. It was for this reason that he was directly shown a red card by the referee.

This goal came from the team's overall impatience and a large-scale offensive, which caused loopholes in the back line. This time it was Ruben Dias who was defeated.Inexperienced, he stood on the midfield line, and the opponent's counterattack long pass fell right behind him, which forced Coady to become the last defensive player besides the goalkeeper.

There was no way around it.

Wei Le didn't even plan to appeal against this penalty - because this penalty was really uncontroversial.

To make matters worse, Newcastle United's winger Richie seized the free kick opportunity and broke through the goal guarded by Martin. The football bounced off the defender and there was a sideline, which was an important factor in Martin's inability to save the situation. In the end, the referee determined that this was not an own goal, but a goal by Richie.

Whether it was Richie's goal or not was no longer important. What Wei Le needed to face now was that the team had to play one less player in the next game and lose a goal first.

Finally, after a difficult decision, Joe Mason had to be replaced early. The central defender Bass, who was replaced, was obviously not ready for Mitrovic's attack. He lost in a physical confrontation, and Mitrovic got the opportunity to face the goalkeeper directly. He did not waste this opportunity. His fierce shot at the near post left Emiliano Martinez helpless.

The two-goal lead was finally maintained until the last moment of the game.

Wei Le was very confused now. Looking back at the bench, he found that there was no one to replace! The remaining players were either too young and lacked game experience, and they were very nervous in the face of such a big scene; or they were not capable enough, and the use of replacing them was actually limited.

It is a pity to have too little knowledge when you need it, and the same is true for people.

Wei Le regretted that he was too conservative in signing players before the start of the season. He only sought to fill the vacancies and bought a few after a few left. However, last season, the team had already experienced some players being overloaded, and this situation was covered up by consecutive victories.

Generally speaking, Wei Le only needs to replace a few energetic players after taking the lead, and replace the tired starters, so that there will be no problem in ensuring the final victory. However, if the substitutes are asked to complete some critical tasks to save the team from danger, and they are required to do better than the main players, it is obviously too much to ask.

It is now mid-September, and there are still about three months before the winter transfer window opens. During this period, Wei Le has to be thrifty.

Hearing the referee blow three long whistles, Wei Le sighed.

He turned around and shook hands with Benítez. Benítez seemed calm and composed, as if he was confident of victory. Of course, Benítez is not the kind of person who is good at getting along with people. They just shook hands and didn't communicate anything else.

Of course, Wei Le was not in the mood to communicate anything else.

Wei Le walked onto the court, patted the players' shoulders and backs one by one as usual, and took them off the court.

"It's okay, it's okay." Wei Le comforted, "Losing is an important part of football, it's not a big deal."

"You performed very well, the responsibility for this game is mine." Wei Le rubbed Jota's little head, and Jota looked depressed, he felt that he didn't play well.

"Sorry..." Coady came out of the locker room to greet his teammates. He looked listless and listless. He felt that his red card brought greater challenges to the team and led to this failure.

"Okay, let's talk about it when we get back." Wei Le held Jota with his left hand and Coady with his right hand, and walked back to the locker room with a smile, "No need to apologize, there's no need to be like this, be calm."

Seeing the still positive Wei Le, the players felt better.

Wei Le didn't say too much in the post-match training. He didn't criticize any player at this moment, but pointed out a lot of praiseworthy points. In the media interview, Benítez defended Wei Le and didn't embarrass Wei Le. Wei Le appeared in the press room somewhat disappointed. Out of sympathy, the reporters did not ask him any sensitive questions.

In fact, Wei Le's previous media handling method of constantly reducing the team's presence has now worked. The media did not criticize their performance, which made Wei Le quite satisfied.

Wei Le was the last one to board the team bus back to Wolverhampton. He sat in the seat and closed his eyes tiredly. Although he was smiling all the time, the loss in his heart was not much less than that of the players.

He needed time to rest.