Chapter 33: Chapter 33: The Manchester Derby: Preparations

Axel expected his teammates to do something in the second half of the game against Juventus, and they did try to do something.

They were clearly the better team in the second half and did everything they could to get that winning goal, but Juventus were resilient in their defense until the end and ended up forcing out a draw from them.

It was an intense match, but they did what they had to do and succeeded in getting the result that was most favorable to them.

With that match concluded, the position of both teams in the Group C table didn't move.

Manchester City remained in second place with seven points from four matches while Juventus were still in first place with ten points from four matches.

When their group draw came out, almost everyone thought it was going to be an easy group stage for Manchester City and Juventus but that wasn't exactly the case now.

Benfica were just behind Juventus with six points, the points they gained after beating Feyenoord back to back.

Now the top two teams had to watch their back because any slip-up from them and Benfica would end up advancing to the round of sixteen, Manchester City were the ones who had to watch their backs the most because they were just a point ahead of the Portuguese team.

The players went back to training the day after that game and Axel being an official member of the team was there for the training session.

Perhaps, they could have gotten a day off if they had defeated Juventus, but there was no way Gregory was going to consider that now, especially when their next game is against Manchester United.

They kicked off their training session with the indoor activities, and after that, they made their way to the pitch to run a couple of laps before jumping into all the drills they had to cover for the day.

They were also going to be doing the one-on-one dribbling drills today, and this time, Axel had no intention to mess up.

He had to retry his attempt the other day after just kicking into the post but he couldn't get past Paul so that was a fail for him.

This time, the defender was going to be Pierre and he was going to be the one to go first.

"Alright, Axel, let's see what you can do," Gregory said as soon as the youngster stepped close to the ball.

'For some reason, I can't help but feel like he's making fun of me.'

He took a deep breath before establishing eye contact with Pierre, his height was quite intimidating even from where he was standing.

At that moment, the high-pitched sound of the whistle pierced through the air, and without hesitation, the youngster gave it a little push.

Pierre quickly closed up on him at that moment, but just before he could get his foot on the ball, Axel pulled it back a little to the right.

The center back quickly pulled himself toward that area to block his path and Axel already aware that he was going to do that quickly tried to flick the ball past him.

However, it was just a feint that ended up doing its job quite well.

With Pierre leaning toward that side now, he quickly pushed past him with the ball but just before he could cover enough ground to kick the ball, a leg came in from behind and ended up getting the ball off his feet before he made contact with the leg and came crashing to the floor.

"Oh come on." He muttered under his breath as he slowly sat up.

He quickly searched for the coach with his eyes, and as soon as he found him, he raised his hand.

"Wasn't that a foul?" He inquired, hoping that he would say yes.

"No." Gregory shook his head. "Not even in the slightest, Pierre clearly made contact with the ball before you collided with his leg, so that's fair play and you lost the ball."

After hearing that, he let out a sigh before slowly bringing his gaze down but at that moment he saw a hand hanging in front of him and it was obviously Pierre's hands.

He didn't want to be rude so he took the hand and allowed the defender to pull him up.

"Compared to how you did against Paul last time, you had something going this time around, if you had been a bit faster, you would have escaped," Pierre revealed.

"Yeah, I sort of figured that out."

"In situations like this when you get past a defender, you should either increase your speed to get away from him or pass it to someone to progress play."

"Okay, I'll keep that in mind," Axel replied with a nod.

________ ________

With the training session done, the players made their way to the locker room because it was time for Gregory to talk about their lineup and tactics.

The match was going to be happening on Friday at the Etihad Stadium and today being Wednesday meant that they had just a day left before the match.

Manchester United were currently sitting in fourth place behind Liverpool who were ahead of them with four points but they were only ahead of Liverpool with three points which was also the point gap between them and Aston Villa who were still sitting in first place.

Matchday nineteen had a couple of interesting matches because Aston Villa were going to face off against Liverpool on the same day the Manchester derby was going to take place.

Depending on how both of these matches turn out, they were going to be in trouble, and that entailed that they would either move down to third place or the point gap between them and Aston Villa would go back to six.

That match-up required Manchester City to come out victorious in their match because it didn't matter who won between Aston Villa and Liverpool, any of them winning was troublesome for them.

Gregory was planning to put everything towards making sure they won the match because Manchester United were looking pretty dangerous recently with a six-game winning streak and a four-game winning streak in the Champions League.

Gregory started by letting them know the players who were going to be starting the match, and just like expected, it was his strongest starting eleven.

Tacky, Merino, and Peterson were leading the attack, and supporting them from midfield were Axel, Andrea, and Maxi.

In defense were from the right side, Rafa, Paul, Pierre, and Davi, and just as expected Moreno was the one in between the sticks.

"Now that that's settled, let's talk about our Manchester brothers and how we're going to deal with that annoying defense of theirs," Gregory remarked before placing his hand on the board.

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