Chen Yingxiong was observing Martin O'Neill, wanting to see what this head coach could do better than Daglish, what kind of ability he had to replace the club's king and legend.

So at first, he adopted a mode of cold observation, neither confronting nor cooperating.

He was the kind of person who would treat you well if you treated him well. Dalglish treated him very well, and even though his coaching level was criticized a lot, he still supported Dalglish.

He was just that simple.

Currently, Martin O'Neill hadn't done anything that made him feel comfortable, so Chen Yingxiong had to continue observing.

Martin O'Neill could also feel Chen Yingxiong's lukewarm attitude towards him—he wasn't an idiot. As a professional coach with more than twenty years of coaching experience, if he couldn't sense such a small emotion from a player, then he would have been wasting his time.

He also knew that Chen Yingxiong was Liverpool's number one star and the most important piece in Liverpool's resurgence.

If he wanted to lead Liverpool to success, he had to have a good relationship with Chen Yingxiong. Or, to put it another way, even if he couldn't become friends with Chen Yingxiong, he couldn't become enemies either.

Martin O'Neill was the kind of head coach who didn't put on airs of being a famous coach, because he had only been famous in English and Scottish football, far inferior to head coaches like Ferguson, Wenger, and Dalglish. So he didn't have any airs and wouldn't act like a big shot. His way of thinking wouldn't be to put himself in a high and mighty position first, and then consider the problem.

He could lower his stance, which many head coaches couldn't do.

Especially in England, where the head coach was the manager of the team, they held great power and had supreme power over the players, so they would naturally habitually feel that they were superior.

O'Neill didn't have this kind of contradiction yet, so he was lucky.

If he was the kind of arrogant head coach who, upon arrival, wanted to clean up the players who had a good relationship with the previous head coach, either kicking them out or putting them on the bench, then Chen Yingxiong would definitely fight him to the end. At that time, Liverpool's locker room would probably be in chaos.

This was also why Niang chose Martin O'Neill, rather than a head coach with a particularly prominent personality. In his opinion, O'Neill was the best lubricant in the locker room, and only someone like O'Neill could get along peacefully with a troublemaker like Chen Yingxiong.

Martin O'Neill decided to talk to Chen Yingxiong. The season was about to begin, and he didn't want to be unclear about Chen Yingxiong's thoughts. If there were any conflicts during the season, the whole season might be ruined.

Chen Yingxiong's temper and personality were a time bomb. He had learned a lot about it from the media before. When he was studying Liverpool, he put a lot of effort into Chen Yingxiong.

Although Liverpool's performance was not necessarily good when Chen Yingxiong was in good form, if Chen Yingxiong was not in good form, Liverpool's performance would definitely be bad.

To complete the new season's task, the primary goal was to ensure Chen Yingxiong's form.

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After training, Chen Yingxiong still chose to stay and practice free kicks—in the end, he only wanted to find a smokescreen for himself to suddenly learn free kicks, so that his teammates would believe that he learned free kicks through extra practice, and would not suspect the source of his free kick skills.

But now it had become a real kind of extra practice. He did improve and maintain his free kick level through this kind of extra practice.

He reserved all the training time in the dungeon for the ball control exercises that Van Basten asked him to do.

Martin O'Neill watched Chen Yingxiong practice free kicks from a distance, thinking that it was not quite the same as the media said. In the media's descriptions, Chen Yingxiong was an arrogant and conceited person. Everyone focused on his personality and temper, but few people paid attention to the secret of this person's success—why could he become the person who defeated Messi in the Champions League? It wouldn't be because his personality was more arrogant than Messi, would it?

Everyone always hated this person's various behaviors, such as arrogance, rudeness, barbarism, lack of politeness... but no one was willing to study why he was successful, why he was able to win the Golden Boot in his first season in the Premier League.

No wonder they ran into Chen Yingxiong, there was only one way to fail.

Last season, O'Neill was unemployed at home, and he could watch the Premier League games of this season with a completely neutral eye.

If you don't face your opponent squarely, you will never be able to defeat them.

This was the philosophy that Martin O'Neill believed in.

Watching Chen Yingxiong kick the football towards the goal again and again, some balls successfully bypassed the wall and flew into the goal, while some balls were either too high or too wide, he was even more convinced of his idea.

This person, who can succeed, must be because he has put in a lot of effort that ordinary people cannot endure and persist in.

He stepped onto the grass.

"Aren't you going to take a break, Hero? You've been practicing for half an hour straight." He shouted to Chen Yingxiong from a distance.

Chen Yingxiong turned his head and saw that the person who came was the head coach. He still kicked the football under his feet out, and then turned around to look at O'Neill.

"I'm not tired, boss."

"Your physical fitness is really great..." O'Neill sincerely praised. The first stage of pre-season training was mainly physical training, with a relatively high intensity, in order to improve physical fitness and allow players to store enough physical energy, so that they would not be physically exhausted after playing a few games.

Therefore, the training intensity these days was very high, and it was all physical training, but after such training, Chen Yingxiong could still practice for an hour as if no one else was around. It had to be said that his physical fitness was really outstanding. If other players did this every day, they would probably have been stopped by the team's coach and team doctor.

In fact, when Martin O'Neill first came to the team, he was very surprised to see Chen Yingxiong practicing so hard. What surprised him even more was that no one in the team, whether it was the coach or the team doctor, was going to stop him. After inquiring, he learned that Chen Yingxiong had been training like this since the second half of last season. They were all used to it, and they had never seen Chen Yingxiong become physically exhausted because of extra training.

"I really can't imagine that you would have a hidden danger of head disease because of frequent use of headers..."

Chen Yingxiong shrugged, and said disdainfully: "That's just the doctors worrying unnecessarily. In fact, I'm not worried about this." What he said was good, he had never worried about the possibility of developing brain disease due to frequent use of headers. The reason why he agreed to use fewer headers was just because he planned to accept this challenge that seemed difficult—he wanted to score more than thirty goals in a season without using headers and win the Golden Boot.

This was obviously more meaningful than preventing any head disease.

Therefore, Chen Yingxiong had not taken the doctor's words to heart until now. If necessary, he would definitely still use headers to score goals, but now he wanted to challenge the limit, so naturally he would use as little as possible. He had to train his legs first, right? Always using his best weapon to deal with the enemy, and always being able to win easily, would make him lose the motivation to improve himself.

He wanted to become an all-around center forward, a super invincible existence. For this goal, what was so great about temporarily not using headers?

Martin O'Neill certainly didn't know Chen Yingxiong's plan, he only thought that Chen Yingxiong didn't care.

But he wasn't very concerned either. He also felt that the sports medicine doctor was too exaggerated. There were so many players who headed the ball in football, how many of them had Alzheimer's disease after retiring? There were only a handful of them.

However, club general manager Niang attached great importance to this matter, and he himself felt that even without headers, Chen Yingxiong's footwork was still outstanding, so he didn't entangle with Niang on this matter.

Since both parties didn't care, there was no need to continue discussing this issue.

Martin O'Neill came to Chen Yingxiong not to talk about the head matter. He planned to have a heart-to-heart talk with Chen Yingxiong, and reveal their bottom lines to each other, so that it would be convenient for everyone to cooperate.

How to start discussing this topic with Chen Yingxiong?

Martin O'Neill was also prepared. He had studied Chen Yingxiong's personality, and he believed that this was a relatively direct person. If he told him something directly, it might be better than hinting at him in a roundabout way. Because with his IQ, he might not be able to understand some hints...

So he said it directly.

"That's right, Hero, I want to talk to you."

Chen Yingxiong shrugged: "Okay."

He neither refused nor was very happy, facing the first solo talk with the new head coach with the most ordinary attitude.

"They all say that the eighteen goals Messi scored last season were eighteen historic goals, eighteen goals that were unprecedented and will never be surpassed. I don't think so."

Martin O'Neill was observing Chen Yingxiong's expression while speaking. A person like Chen Yingxiong should not be good at hiding his inner thoughts. If he had any ideas, they could definitely be seen through changes in his expression.

Sure enough, when he said this, Chen Yingxiong's eyebrows twitched.

Martin O'Neill knew that he had bet right—Chen Yingxiong was indeed very unhappy with Messi!

Thinking about it, it was also true. A similarly excellent center forward was blown into the world's number one by the media just because he didn't participate in the Champions League for a season. He must be unhappy in his heart... How could an arrogant person tolerate his opponent riding on his neck and shitting, and so many people cheering for him?

And Chen Yingxiong happened to be such an arrogant person.

"So my goal this season is to get the team back into the Champions League. To prove to the world that Liverpool also has a top scorer."

Chen Yingxiong opened his mouth to speak.

"Wrong, boss. It's not that Liverpool also has a top scorer. It's... the most powerful scorer, only Liverpool has!"

Chen Yingxiong pointed at himself with his thumb, and said confidently and brazenly.