Chapter 113: A Fate Encounter

The draw of Aston Villa at home made the Forests players discover that during training, there were more reporters on the sidelines suddenly. Everyone in the local media knew each other, and most of the faces they felt were unfamiliar from London.

"We just tied a game, why are these media so excited?" Eastwood asked in confusion when he pointed at the long gun outside the barbed wire.

"Because they also know that we are destined to be the champion of this season!" Tang En nodded vigorously from the side, with a certain tone.

Eastwood turned his head and looked at Don An in surprise: "Boss, aren't you kidding?"

Tang En shook his head seriously: "No, of course I'm joking."

Someone next to him started to laugh.

David Chris Lack explained from the side: "They are paying attention to us not because of ourselves, but because of our opponent in the next round of the league - Arsenal."

Recently, the media has hyped up the fateful entanglement between Arsenal and Nottingham Forest, just like a bloody 8 o'clock TV series, and few people don't know. Only Eastwood, who doesn't care about anything except playing his own ball, will be surprised to see so many reporters gathered in Vilford.

Pierce Bruce, who stood outside the training ground with other reporters, had to sigh at the arrangement of fate: the opponent Arsenal faced when he broke the record was the team that set the record. When Clauve led the team to set this record, it was once considered that no one could reach it for a long time. Now that he has not died, the record is in danger of being broken.

The media in North London, except for supporting Tottenham Hotspur, all looked up to Arsenal in one side, believing that Arsenal broke the record for 25 years at Forest’s home court. After all, Arsenal is now strong. It is in a good state, and Forest is not very adaptable to the pace of the Premier League. He only scored one point in the first two rounds of the league, and the result of one loss and one draw was too unconvincing when facing the strong Arsenal.

At the end of the training, the players walked from the training ground to the locker room, and along the way, reporters came up to ask them about records and questions about Arsenal. Most of them asked, "How do you think Arsenal is strong? How likely are they to break the record?" Some players can answer this question that has little to do with them.

When you meet someone with a bad temper, you don’t even care about those reporters. For example, George Wood looked at the reporters who put the microphone in front of his mouth with a very cold look. Just when the other party was full of expectations, he turned his eyes away and left the group of reporters without saying a word.

And there are more and more Forest players treating reporters like him. At first, everyone was interested in this kind of attention and thought it was new. After all, they are too far from the record twenty-five years ago, and they will not think it is such a bad thing to be broken.

But if the people around you open their mouths and shut up, it is "How is Arsenal?" and "How is Henry?". When asked such questions, you will always feel "I am being despised".

"I want to cooperate with them, but they asked all about Arsenal. I can't cooperate even if I want to cooperate." Tang En shrugged with the phone in his hand.

"Come on, Tony. Don't do this in front of me, you feel very uncomfortable, right?"

"Well...If someone praises your direct competitor in front of you, and then asks you to say good things about this competitor. If they don't say it nicely, they will be dissatisfied with it... I think Evan, you will be very upset."

"This...you're right, Tony. Do it well and let those who look down on us suffer!"

Just after the call from the club chairman, Donne received another call from Pierce Bruce: "Tony, are you serious about what you said at the press conference?"

Bruce was still standing in the parking lot of the Wilford training base. Other reporters complained about Tony Donn, who was acting like a big shot, and left the place. He was the only one who was unwilling to give up and hoped to use his personal relationship to obtain exclusive interview rights.

"Of course it's true." Tang En said in a joking tone.

"this……"

"Okay. Mr. Journalist." Done always habitually calls Bruce "Mr. Journalist". He doesn't want Bruce to feel that the relationship between the two is very close. "I think there are some things I think I'm more appropriate to say by myself than you for me, so I'll update my personal column in the Evening Post soon."

"But..." Bruce still hoped to sign his name in a report that would attract public attention.

"Mr. Journalist, do you dare to scold your colleagues for being 'bitches' in your articles?"

"How is this possible...Why do I want..."

"That's right, I dare." Tang En hung up the phone with a laugh.

The next day, Tony Donn's column published a statement about the rejection of the reporter's interview. Donnn scolded the media for not respecting others in the article. He had no professional ethics. Here, he used the phrase "bitch-raising" to the media for the first time. Of course, despite using swear words, his tone was not fierce. He was still his inherent style - mockery and swear words coexist, irony and various strange metaphors complement each other...

Tang En just didn't cooperate with the media, and it was a delusion to find any news from him. The first one to hit the window was Sky TV reporter. Tang En used the excuse of leading the team to train, and it was not appropriate to be distracted at the moment of the battle, so he refused this TV agency that exclusively broadcasted the Premier League.

The media can only dig deep gossip. They try every means to find the Forest players from twenty-five years ago, but few people can be found... Of course, most of the focus is on the head coach of the Forest team, Brian Crowff.

Clauve's doorstep from Derbyshire house, more than twenty journalists gathered in one day, all of whom wanted to hear the creators of the record and their views on record-grabbingers.

In dealing with the media, Clauve is much more experienced than Donn. He praised Arsenal in an interview, calling himself a Wengerian admirer, the team he likes the most is Arsenal, and the striker is Henry. He believes that Arsenal is playing art football ten years ahead of the Premier League. Therefore, his record is tied or even broken by such an excellent and great team, and he has nothing to complain about. Finally, he encouraged Arsenal to surpass the forest at that time.

He said this, maybe it would be a pleasure for Arsenal fans. But the old man with a rebellious personality added: "As Coach Tony Donn said, all records are for being broken. After all, we set records and no one can despise the existence of records. For me, forty-two unbeaten games are more exciting than the Champions League championship. Arsenal is just a junior who challenges us."

This sentence was said at the end, but it is enough to show the old man's pride. Unfortunately, not everyone noticed this.

Tang En noticed that this sentence made him feel much more comfortable. He knew that the boss was still helping him, but this old British man expressed his emotions more traditionally - he always liked to express their feelings silently and in a low-key manner.

I support you. Tony. But don't expect to hear a publicly good thing from me.

Maybe one day, when you reach my height back then, I will reluctantly say: "It's okay, just like when I was young."

That is the highest praise I have given you, boy!

Unlike Donn, who treated the media rudely, although Wenger had no good feelings for the English media, because when he first arrived in England, the English paparazzi claimed that the French were homosexual... But he just tried to be cautious. He rarely stayed alone in front of the media.

Now that Arsenal is about to break the record, he has to appear in TV cameras or in sports pages of newspapers more than usual.

Speaking of Nottingham Forest, he expressed necessary respect to the team. Clauve said that he was his idol, which made Wenger feel a little excited to speak. He announced that he was also a fan of Nottingham Forest and liked to watch Clauve's team play football since he was a child. The years of the Forest team swept across Europe are still unforgettable, and he is very excited when he thinks about it...

But who knows how many sentences are true and how many sentences are false...

When talking about the soon-to-be-game, Wenger closed his admiration for Nottingham Forest, although he affirmed Tony Donn's actions in the summer transfer market. But at the same time, he expressed confidently that his team was ready to set a new record.

"The best way to pay tribute to the record creators is to defeat them and create a new record." After saying this "Victory Declaration" that excited the media, Wenger walked back to the office building. He already knew how to deal with these media. But obviously his opponent didn't know.

Thinking of the fact that Tang En and the media were having a very stalemate over this incident, a smile appeared on the Frenchman's face.

Is the thirty-five-year-old head coach? So young...

"Welcome to Nottingham! The historic city in central England. Here are the dense Sherwood Forest, and the world-renowned thief Robin Hood, who robs the rich and helps the poor! There is also a great team here - Nottingham Forest!" When Sky TV reporters said this, the cameraman tacitly gave the reporter a shot of the city court behind him, and brought it closer, the close-up Nottingham Forest logo, the red one was particularly eye-catching in the sun.

"Yes. Bryan Clauve set the Forest Dynasty and left a record that future generations look up to - England's top league unbeaten record: forty-two games! Until today... twenty-five years, this record may be rewritten. And what makes us have to sigh that the magic of the Hand of Destiny is that if a team with the opportunity to rewrite the record wants to succeed, it must defeat the creator of this record!"

As soon as he finished shouting, he saw two groups of people wearing red jerseys, but clearly walked by the ground. Arsenal fans sang songs supporting Arsenal, while Nottingham Forest fans sang songs they wrote for Tony Donne.

The cameraman's camera followed closely the two groups of people. It seemed that they could see the appearance of the game waiting for a while.

The stands were already full. The news media almost squeezed around outside the court, and everyone was looking forward to the two opponents who were pulled together by the hand of fate in such a fateful showdown. How would they perform?

Arsenal and Nottingham Forest have a deep relationship, because two of the founders established by Arsenal are players of Nottingham Forest. When Arsenal was first established, there was no one with his own jerseys, and the two founders went to the Forest Club to borrow a batch of jerseys and football, which was considered as the team of their own.

But the subsequent developments of the two teams are very different. Arsenal relied on Chapman to create their dynasty in the 1930s and embarked on a path to a wealthy family. And what about Nottingham Forest? It has never been considered a wealthy family, at most it is considered a veteran strong team, and it has become a household name only because of the Crowf era. Economy, influence, strength... No matter what, the Forest team looks like a shabby country poor relative in front of Arsenal, although it was this poor relative who helped them when Arsenal had no milk.

In front of Arsenal, perhaps the two silver-shining Champions League trophys and the 42-game unbeaten England top league record.

But now... the Champions League trophy is a future, and it may not be a matter of the year or month. But the 42 records have been tied by Arsenal, and the day when the record is broken is even more popular by the media as if it is today.
Chapter completed!