The ‘Whipping Boys’ are BACK!

By: Nikhil Apte | October 18th, 2011

Real Madrid CF vs. Olympique Lyonnais.

UEFA Champions League Group Stages 2011/12.

On a very symbolic note, the top three French teams go head to head against the strongest forces of the top three leagues in the world. Lille up against Inter Milan, Marseille against Arsenal, and closer home, Real Madrid go head to toe and foot to mouth against Lyon.

There is precious little that is left to say about the legendary ties between Lyon and Real Madrid. At the beginning, they called it a fairy tale run for Lyon. Some even thought of them as a one trick pony. Only lately however, have Madrid fans and players alike given Lyon the deserved respect. With respect comes a price to pay. The opposition is twenty times more cautious, and the fans are thirty six times more demanding.

Champions League Bomb

We have seen all possible outcomes in the eight ties gone by, and now it would only be fair to give Real Madrid some chance of getting a favourable result. </Tongue in cheek>

Round Nine. FIGHT!

Kaka is back in form. Gerland old boy Benzema is scoring, Cristiano Ronaldo is scoring, while Higuain is gobbling up hat-tricks for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mourinho can be assumed to have learnt a trick or two about Lyon from the last season. Madrid remains a very scary team to look at. For Les Gones fans that still admire Benzema as their own, it would be a good time to remember his Champions League goal scoring record and last year’s tie in which he scored in both legs against Lyon. Hiss away, hiss away!

One only hopes for two things to happen.

Gomis gets three offside goals and one overhead kick goal,
Hugo Lloris has really been practicing with all these things and more :

Somehow, things look different this season from the last, when we probably had a stronger team on paper. The spirit in the team is that of great enthusiasm. Bastos is whipping in monstrous crosses, Gonalons is doing great in Le Toule’s former hunting ground, and Bakary Koné has fit into the the team like a free-sized sock!

The display of dominance against Nancy served as a great morale booster, no doubt. But in the next two weeks, Lyon play Real Madrid twice, arch rivals Saint Etienne twice (back to back Ligue 1 and Coupe de la Ligue), and the reigning champions Lille. Like Rémi Garde mentioned, the objective for this Lyonnais team at the Santiago Bernabéu is to get something out of the match. A draw would be a decent result, as it would confirm the second spot in the table for this match-day. But if Lyon thought PSG were quick in their 2-0 victory, Real Madrid could safely assumed to be freakish of sorts. I hope Koné-Lovren pair stays, instead of Cris jumping into the match after playing just 2 games this season.

Who’s in the Line Ups and who’s out occupying Wall Street?

Grenier had an hamstring injury in the match against ASNL, and shall not feature in this match. Lisandro is already out from an ankle injury a few weeks ago. On the plus side, Cris, Ederson, Gourcuff did make their way on to the pitch in the recent Ligue 1 match. Sure, Lyon was leading 3-0 when Gourcuff entered for Grenier, but he appears focused as ever to attempt to leave a mark on the game. His nervous spot-jogging at kickoff to warm up looked like a sign of that.

Probable Teams:

Real Madrid - Casillas; Arbeloa, Pepe, Ramos, Marcelo; Xabi Alonso, Khedira; Kaka, Özil, Ronaldo; Higuain

Lyon – Lloris; Réveillère, B. Koné, Lovren, Cissokho; Gonalons, Källström; Briand, Gourcuff, Bastos; Gomis

Do well, Lyonnais!

Some Related Lyon Posts:

Category: Champions League

« Lyon vs Nancy : The restart | Home | Lille vs Lyon : Just how strong are we? »

muadz matmu

Before the match starts, anny links for Lille against Lyon?
John

http://www.goal.com/en/news/90...
Now, if the goal is to make up for 28mill, no two players- unless we're talking about a combination of either Lloris, Bastos or Lisandro- will make that up. I just don't know why they don't wait until summer to clean house. Cris, Kallstrom,Ederson, Cissokho, and Lloris would clear almost 17mill pr/year of salary off the books, and Lloris and Cissokho's sales prices would bring in near/over 20mill. Bastos would add another 15mill.
I'm wondering who, aside from Cissokho, are they willing to sell this winter? I can't think of anyone who is expendable, desired, and will fetch a deasent price. I hope they aren't crazy enough to sell Bastos, Gomis, Lloris or one of our CBs.
muffin

I'm thinking Cissokho, Briand and Gourcuff are in the top of our transfer list. If interest is not big enough for these players, then probably we will have to deal with an unwanted departure (like in Pjanić's case). Then come maybe Bastos, Lloris or even Lisandro.
Looks disappointing for now, but I think Aulas wants to have the club financially in plus about time when the new stadium is done. And for this case, he's probably building the team for the future with players like Gonalons, Lacazette, Grenier, Fofana, Belfodil, Kone, Lovren, Kolodzieczak...Which doesn't look bad to me at all.
So if any of our backbone players leave, we'll probably see signings of some young talented players again.
John

I forgot about Mensah. I wish he'd get some playing time and maybe- by some miracle of God- stay healthy so we can unload him.
John

I was thinking the same, except that who is going to buy Briand or Gourcuff for anything near what we payed? I hope Gourcuff comes on strong before the window and Wenger is motivated to take him off our hands.
Dror

seeing how much teams pay for players nowadays, i cant get over the low price we got for Pjanic, and what bothers me even more is the absurd price we got for Toul, a player of his class could've gone for 3 times the price (and money aside, no idea why a player like him has to play for Malaga
muffin

Hey, let's not kid ourselves; Toulalan wasn't really a player on the rise in Lyon. Infact the opposite. His last season in Lyon was mediocre at best and it's not like we were the best team in France. When I look at Lille losing Gervinho, Cabaye and Rami - all crucial players for them - for just about 23M€ alltogether, I say we didn't get such a bad deal for Toulalan. Especially now when Gonalons is thriving in his position and looks abe to surpass Toulalan in every way.
And from what I hear, Toule's not doing really good in Malaga. So in my opinion we got 10M€ for a player which we've replaced with a better and younger player for exactly 0€.
Similar to Pjanić who's had only 1 good season at OL and vanished last season. Sure, I wasn't happy with his sale, but Grenier looks very good so far!
John

Muffin summed it up perfectly. I would only add that Toulalan was worth around 15mill at the top of his game, which he reached the year before. And, you also have the appeal of playing in one of the "best" leagues in the world, plus OL kind of showed him the door when they saw there was a serious buyer.
Nikhil Apte

Malaga's ala PSG "project" lured him, I guess.
Nikhil Apte

Wow, terrible news at its best!
Luke99

I Think RM is the strongest team in the world at the moment even Barca knows that but thats not an excuse i think this Lyon team really need to go back and learn the basics of football they dnt even know how to pass the ball to each other i have seen other teams play against RM and they do so much better than we did. It seems like our whole team is scared of RM just look at there faces when there lining-up for the Uefa anthem we need to stop fearing teams if we wanna go far a good example is the 2009-2010 season we were afraid of Bayern and as result led us to getting trashed 4-0 while Bayern and Fiorentina tied 4-4 on aggregate because they took the game to bayern and were fearless and we all know Lyon is stronger than Fiorentina
Nikhil Apte

I think Lyon weren't as intimidated of Bayern and Real Madrid -the teams- as they were of their stadiums. I'm about 80% sure it is the stadium that intimidates them, as once the game starts, they do start with a fight.
Both Allianz Arena and the Bernabeu are massive compared to what our players are used to in Ligue 1. Claude Puel also mentioned the history and significance of the Anfield when Lyon played Liverpool.
That is the whole point of making intimidating stadiums anyway. The home stadium should look and feel like a fortress.
Lyon has been too used to stadiums like that of Lille's currently, where you can clearly listen to players calling each other instead of the loud singing that should go on.

Lyon needs to play more friendlies in Spain and England instead of Portugal and in Africa.

And there's no shame in losing to a superior team, surely. You keep your chin up, and keep improving till you really belong to that league.
Luke99

There is no shame ofcourse becuase we are facing the 2nd strongest team in the world at the moment and i dnt really think the problem is stadiums because Lyon has alot of experience in the Champions League and some of them have even played for their countries in the World Cup so stadiums shouldnt be an issue it has to be somthing else becuase i always thought we were in the top 10 teams in eroupe but after some results away from home such as

0-4 Real Madrid
0-0 Ajax
1-1 Ruben Kazan
0-3 Real Madrid
0-3 Schalke
3-4 Benfica
3-1 Hapeol tel aviv
0-1 Bayern Munchen
0-1 Bordeaux
1-1 Real Madrid
0-1 Fiorentina
4-0 Debrecen
2-1 Liverpool

with these kind of results i dnt think will ever be considered one of the big dogs and we will also fall down the uefa rankings
Nikhil Apte

Lyon is still some way out of the top league, as most of the UEFA coefficient ranking currently is because of the Semi-finals run and Juninho & Co's work since they take 5 years performance into account.
Nikhil Apte

Beaten thoroughly by a mature team with a great manager.
Russ

Youre right and yea I wasn't expecting a good result tonight but the 2nd half performance was completely unacceptable we were still very much in the match going in to the 2nd half and as soon as the 2nd half started we looked completely lost I don't understand why this happened
carvivlie

We are completely unable to shut them down from corners. Just what I feared--scoreline wise. We are playing scared and I don't like it!
Russ

yea we played scared for practically the entire match although I feel like we defended extremely well in the 1st half minus the set piece goal they scored but in the 2nd half...what the hell happened??? 2nd half performance was shambolic
carvivlie

Damage control time.
tiamo

Oh man, Lloris is going to be so tired in the second half. RM gave him a real work out.
Nikhil Apte

I've been pretty tensed throughout the match.
Briand's prospects of getting one over Pepe and slotting something into the goal look good as of now!
carvivlie

We are giving up alot of possession in the middle of the field. We need to slow it down.
carvivlie

Gourcuff has been completely open in the middle and everyone seems to be passing around him!
Emily

I saw the same thing. Just like at the WC. and he had some decent touches, too. There were a couple of moments where I thought that Yo certainly needed to get back into match rhythm, which will come with time. The first half wasn't so bad, they just couldn't come forward with the ball as a unit. That offside goal was a heart-breaker...
John

F#cking Gomis, g#damned offside again!!!! Bastos and Briand seem like the only ones with a pulse thus far.
John

ohhhhhh, you just knew Benzema was going to get at least one on us. He's making that 40mill we got for him look like no so good a deal for us.
carvivlie

This is going to sound crazy, but I think we are better off if Benz--or anyone other than CR--scores for RM first. Why? Because CR can't stand when he isn't the one scoring, so he becomes really selfish with the ball. Which of course, makes it easier to defend and keep the score low. But, he actually becomes a bit less selfish once he has. Unless Benz scores two to CR's one, and then he becomes selfish again. Of course, that is a disastrous scenario anyway. I must be nervous because I'm starting to ramble.
carvivlie

Realistically, I think we need to worry about goal differential. We don't want Real putting 4 by us.
Ronan

Real are hardly our whipping boys after last seasons comfortable win,and Inter are nere the relegation zone in Italy,as well as Arsenal who arent englands biggest force anyway. Just saying :)
Nikhil Apte

Sigh.
Tibor

Gonalons is injured,so we'll probably have Fofana-Kallstorm-Gourcuff midfield :/
Nikhil Apte

Fofana it is! Was hoping for Gonalons since thigh injuries have more chance of being patched up and forgotten. :P