156 EFL Cup Part 1 (1/2)

Chapter 156: EFL Cup Part 1

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

On February 7th, Nottingham Forest was back on their journey in the English Football League Championship. After more than a dozen days of rest and reorganization, they scored a modest 1:0 victory against Coventry City on their home field.

While the dozen or so days of break gave Tang En the time to adjust the team's tactics, and once again prepare for a new battle, it interrupted the Forest team's rhythm. It was a tough game for them to play on their home turf, and they finally beat their opponents by scoring a somewhat suspect, offside goal.

After the game, the Coventry City manager jabbered on about the referee's decision, thinking that his team should have been the winner. But Tang En, who got off lightly, insisted that the referee was right, and did not want to further mention the goal.

It was not important for Tang En and the Forest team, whether the ball was offsides or not. But, it did matter to the Coventry City manager, who was splitting hairs over this issue. He just needed to know that his team had received the three valuable points in said situation.

Victory was the most important thing, after all, and the process ... was just part of the path towards victory. No matter what methods were used, they just needed to reach the finish line.

A week later, Nottingham Forest's winning streak finally ended. In the 31st round of the League Championship, they were forced into a 1:1 draw with Walsall at their home turf. Because they were one match short, they were still in 14th place. The tied game also did not affect them much. After all, they did not lose. This went to show that Tang En's insistence on a motto, ”Don't lose, even if you won't win”, was correct.

On February 17th, in the 24th round of the make up game, Nottingham Forest challenged Gillingham to an away match. Judging from the scene, the Forest team was still at a disadvantage.

The young players' problem of unstable state of play was fully exposed. They could get the better of their opponents in succession, or they could also let the opponents gain the upper hand consecutively. Eventually, the final score was tied at 0:0. Tang En unequivocally relied on his tactics to obtain a point in this away game, finally, with much difficulty. He was most gratified that, in the end, they did not lose.

He was realizing more and more, the kind of pressure that came from being a manager. As in, every time he saw the opponents surrounding his own goal, and bombarding it, his heart would be in his throat. Every time a shot to the goal was attempted, his heart would stop. It was an awful feeling.

February 29th was the EFL Cup final. Before that, Nottingham Forest had one match every three days: three League Championship matches on the 14th, 17th, and 21st. This caused Tang En to make some veiled criticisms at the press conferences. He complained that the League committee did not know how to adequately accommodate the players, especially regarding the fact that such an intensive game schedule was arranged before such an important match, providing his team with no time to rest.

As a matter of fact, the League committee was justified in this arrangement, because one of these three scheduled games was a make up game, and they had also postponed the 33rd round match between the Forest team and Bradford City. If the games were to proceed as usual, the kick-off date of the game would be February 28th ...

On February 21st, the 32nd round of the League Championship, Nottingham Forest continued traveling to away games. This time, their opponent was Rotherham United, and the final score was 1:1. It was another draw. After their winning streak, the Forest team had consecutive draw matches, but, again, at least they did not lose.

Tang En was slightly relieved, but he had to put all his efforts into preparing for the EFL Cup final with Middlesbrough. Now, eight days away from the finals, the media coverage had gradually increased.

Because the Forest team was a League One team, and was back in the final after twelve years, they received more attention. Even Tang En felt a little nervous, as he was watching those media reporters wandering outside the training ground. But this kind of tension could not be shown in front of outsiders, as he was the leader of these players, and the leader could not be nervous, could not hesitate, and could not disappoint them.

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Des Walker gave the new training plan to Tang En. Today was February 23, and they still had six days for targeted training. Before the training session on this day, the coaching team must come together to discuss this plan.

Tang En looked at it, and deleted all the training on offense, except for the ”offensive positioning ball drill”, then he passed it to everyone present. Walker and the coaches looked at this ”new plan”, and glanced at each other.

Seeing their puzzled expressions, Tang En smiled. ”It's very simple, we're not going to use offense on Middlesbrough in the match. We are going to play defense, and let them attack. Not only that, there's also an additional training program in this list – to increase the amount of training on penalty kicks by twenty minutes at the end of each day's training,” he explained.