After beating Shanghai Harbour Chinese Super League in three consecutive rounds, the lead in the Super League table narrowed to nine points. The suspense of the title race has risen again when there are still six rounds to be played in the Super League.
Head coach Javier will bear the main responsibility for Shanghai allowing Shandong Luneng, who caught up later, to regain hope of winning the title after an otherwise assured victory. If he doesn't use a lineup to the end, he won't dare to use substitutes, which will lead to sleepiness and fatigue among Shanghai's starters. Shanghai with a deep bench won't suddenly fall into a slump in the second half, leading to back-to-back losses.
In fact, throughout the entire Chinese Super League, the strongest bench lineup is Shanghai Harbour. However, Javier has no idea how to rotate such a strong Shanghai bench lineup, and only believes in a set-in-stone starting lineup in his mind. In front of such a stubborn coach, those Shanghai bench players can only become the chicken ribs of the Chinese Super League, which is unlucky enough.
This season, in the Shanghai Port team, there are three strong international players are fully qualified to enter the Shanghai Port's starting lineup, but Havel turned a blind eye to them, put them on the cold plate for a long period of time, so that they completely become the fringe of the Shanghai Port, and even seldom give them the opportunity to substitutes. It's a waste of resources for Javier to do this.
The three international players who have been snubbed by Javier are Yu Hai, Li Shenglong and Wei Zhen. Although Yu Hai is 36 years old, the sword has not aged yet, with both offense and defense, and his athleticism has not declined too much. Even if he doesn't have enough stamina to play the whole game, he will have no problem playing 30 minutes in the second half. However, after 24 rounds of Chinese Super League matches, Javier only gave Yu Hai one chance to play as a substitute. The national soccer team's anti-Korean hero of the year has become a complete embarrassment to Shanghai's decorations.
Homegrown center forward Li Shenglong is young and strong, and has been in very good form this season. Although he only got 6 appearances and only 2 starts in the Chinese Super League, he got 3 goals in Shanghai Harbour, which is the highest goal scoring efficiency in the Chinese Super League. However, it is confusing that Javier still doesn't trust Li Shenglong.
The last international player left out in the cold was Wei Zhen, a young defenseman. Wei Zhen is not only big, but he is also a good attacker and defender. He was the best of the young local defenders and was selected for the Chinese men's soccer team several times. But it was hard for such a good Wei Zhen to get into Javier's eyes. After 24 rounds of Chinese Super League matches, Wei Zhen only got three starts in Shanghai. Looks like throat.
It's no exaggeration to say that if Javier had been able to use the three international replacements mentioned above as key rotation targets for Shanghai Port, Shanghai Port wouldn't have started the season as high as they did.
