Despite bringing in eight new players in the winter transfer window, Beijing Guoan have been very mediocre in the league, failing to win two consecutive matches.
In the first match of the league, Guoan, who returned to New Sports to face Meizhou Hakka, the newest team in the Chinese Super League, was supposed to give back to the Beijing fans by cheering the team with a big win. However, the attacking Guoan team was never able to score. Instead, they were caught on the counterattack by Meizhou Hakka, who took advantage of mistakes by Guoan defender Yu Dabao and goalkeeper Zou Dehai to score first.
Facing the unfavorable situation of conceding the first goal, Guoan didn't have many good solutions to solve the problem of not scoring, and only barely drew the opponent with a controversial penalty kick.
In the second round of the league, Guoan challenged last season's Chinese Super League champions Wuhan Sanzhen on the road. Unlike the previous round, this time it was time for Guoan to be passive. Fortunately, Han Jiaqi, the newly introduced goalkeeper of Guoan team, played his courage and pounced on many dangerous shots from Wuhan. In addition, Wuhan players who were eager to eat Guoan's team were too hasty and wasted several chances to score.
It's fair to say that Guoan were very lucky in this match. Not only did they not get broken by Sanzen, but they relied on Yang Liyu to capitalize on a cheap mistake by the home team's goalkeeper Liu Dengzheng to score the first goal.
After conceding the goal, Sanzhen became even more anxious and could not equalize the score. Seeing that Guoan would beat Sanzhen 1-0 away from home, coach Stanley made a fatal mistake at the end of the game by replacing Brazilian midfielder De Souza with Zhang Chengdong.
As a result, Guoan were punished. Only three minutes after Zhang Chengdong came on the field, Sanzhen foreign striker Admiral Admiral Son easily passed Zhang Chengdong in the penalty area and broke the door of Guoan team, which had to accept the result of harvesting a draw again.
Looking at the past two games, Guoan team has many problems at the moment. The problem of aging backline personnel has not been solved yet, Yu Dabao plus Ngaardew are more than 68 years old together. One of them is slow and the other has poor positional sense, and they are often caught in counterattacks by the opponent's forwards. If De Souza doesn't perform well, Guoan may not even get two draws.
Compared to the backline, Guoan's forward line has bigger problems. Yang Liyu and Wang Ziming are currently in poor form and can't find a way to score at all. In addition, although foreigner Ademi, who is used as a front man, is full of impact and can often charge into the opponent's goal, his shot is really hard to compliment.
And Fang Hao, the red-hot international player Guoan brought in from Taishan, couldn't show his real strength at all because he had too little playing time.
Therefore, the biggest problem currently plaguing Guoan is undoubtedly the weakness of the striker. Fortunately, Zhang Yuning, the local golden boot of last season's Guoan, made a fiery comeback. Recently, he and coach Stanley participated in the pre-match press conference between Guoan and Qingdao Sea Bulls. This shows that Zhang Yuning is now physically fit to play.
Although we're not sure if Zhang Yuning will make it into Guoan's starting lineup, I'm sure he can at least come on as a substitute. Zhang Yuning's return undoubtedly greatly improves Guoan's striker offense. With this problem solved, facing the weak Qingdao Hainiu team, Guoan is very hopeful to beat their opponent on the road and win their first win in the Chinese Super League this season.
However, Guoan's weakness problem cannot be solved by Zhang Yuning alone. Stanley must help Yang Liyu and Wang Ziming find their form as soon as possible. Otherwise, it will be difficult for Guoan to enter the top four in the table this year
