Let’s Just Pretend That the Last Week Never Happened
By: Inara | March 17th, 2009Lyon still have a one point lead (thanks, Marseille!), no new injuries have befallen the squad, and the sun is still shining.
So this is an OPTIMISM post. As opposed to my last post, which was all about the pessimism.
Lyon are going through a slump right now, but they’ll make it through. The players are a little down is all – after all, it’s hard to summon the enthusiasm when all that’s left to play for is the championship (which won’t be easy at all this year). It’s too early to blame Puel. It takes time to build a good team, and the moment he started, injuries started piling on the team, one after another. Also keep in mind that he’s also learning – it takes a while for a manager to become familiar with his players. While he brought in some buys (and I think they were good ones, for the most part), the bulk of the squad is not of his choosing.
The solution is not buying more players or bringing in another manager. Lyon has never been able to gel as a team. Look at Barca – the core of that team has been together for a long time. Yes, Lyon have difficultly in keeping players, but maybe we can this summer. Benzema will stay for another season, and the new players will stay as well. Only Toulalan is in danger of moving, and I don’t think he will. So give it time.
And we finally have the thing we’ve all wanted – a real title race.
Category: Team News and Rumors
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A statistical retro
We are in the last break before the final run-in that will go non-stop right up to the finishing line. 42 matchs played: 29 in the L1, 8 in the Champions League, 3 in the Coupe de France, 1 in the Coupe de la Ligue and 1 in the Champions Trophy.
THE NORMAL STARTING 11 TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION PLAYING TIME
Lloris (3 330) – Réveillère (1 682), Cris (3 302), Boumsong 2 670), Grosso (2 579) – Makoun (3 095), Toulalan (3 237), Juninho (2 358 – Ederson (2 211), Benzema (2 896), Källström (1 961).
28 players used including Baros and Fred who have left OL during the season.
THE NORMAL STARTING 11 (matches)
Lloris (37) – Réveillère (19), Cris (36), Boumsong (30), Grosso (29) – Makoun (33), Toulalan (36), Juninho (28) – Ederson (25), Benzema (33), Källström (22).
Lloris and Cris have never been substituted during a match.
FORMATION USED AT THE START OF A MATCH
4-3-3: 21 times
4-2-3-1: 14 times
4-4-2: 6 times
4-3-1-2: 1 timesTHE MOST FREQUENTLY USED SUBSTITUTES
Piquionne (15), Pjanic (12), Mounier (11), Delgado (11), Källström (11), Ederson (11), Makoun (7), Fred (7), Keita (6), Benzema (5)…
Makoun has taken part in 40 of the 42 matches.
THE MOST FREQUENTLY SUBSTITUTED PLAYERS
Ederson (21), Juninho (16), Benzema (15), Keita (12), Källström (8), Delgado (7)…
NUMBER OF SUBSTITUTES USED PER MATCH
0: 0 times
1: 0 times
2: 7 times
3: 35 timesPosted from
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Shots and goals
Lyon have shot 658 times on their opponents goal in 42 matches and have scored 65 goals…Topping the lists are, evidently, Benzema and Juninho…
658 shots, broken down as follows : 265 on target, 265 off target and 128 blocked. 311 outside and 347 inside the penalty area. 65 goals.
L1: 460 shots (183 on target, 190 off target and 87 blocked; 218 outside and 242 inside the penalty area). 38 goals.
Champions Trophy: 3 shots (0 on target, 2 off target and 1 blocked; 1 outside and 2 inside the penalty area). 0 goals.
National cup competitions : 77 shots (33 on target, 28 off target and 16 blocked; 36 outside and 41 inside the penalty area). 10 goals.
Champions League : 118 shots (49 on target, 45 off target and 24 blocked; 56 outside and 62 inside the penalty area). 17 goals.
Of these 658 shots 16 hit the cross bar or the post . Juninho 5, Benzema 3, Ederson 2, Boumsong, Tafer, Bodmer, Keita, Fred et Toulalan.
The top 5 OL shot makers ?
Karim Benzema has shot on 134 occasions. 57 shots on target for 18 goals.
Juninho 105 shots for 8 goals. 83 of the 105 shots coming from free-kicks.
Ederson arrives in 3rd place with 80 shots, 30 of which were on target for 5 goals.
Källström, 45 shots (34 outside of the penalty area) for 2 goals.
Makoun has shot 41 times (13 on target) for 7 goals…
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Sorry Govou it was only a joke,I didnt mean to be rude or out of order. One thing which totally baffles me is “football manager”claims.WTF ?. I have never played that game in fact I dont even have a console to play it at all-you guys are acting as if Im saying to sign Ronaldo(Cristiano),Messi,Ferdinand,Pato and Torres,which yes that would be stupid and not worth saying and yes it would be like some football game to sign them. BUT I am saying players to sign who are in positions we lack (CB,LB/LW,RW,ST)I mean for god sake if Lyon arent capable or see it as a dream to sign an out of contarct in the summer Erdinc-then fuck me OL should be relegated because that would be poor. The thing is most of the players I mentioned most of you guys at some point have mentioned to sign also.
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Hangeland-a good solid defender who plays for Fulham, not Chelsea-Fulham so I cant see how that is unrealistic. Sakho-relatively cheap solid defender who plays for a weaker side than us in Ligue 1 also. A player like him we need-cant see how thats unrealistic. Bastos-we need a left sided talent,Bastos plays for a Lille side weaker than us and he is also keen on moving to a bigger french club-cant see how thats unrealistic. Erdinc-Yer I mean signing a player who plays for a relegation french side and also the fact that he is out of contact in the summer would be a mountain to climb for Lyon-(not). And finally Dagoberto of Sao Paulo-well plain and simply we could sign him. Football manager ? No not at all Im living in the real world-that Lyon are a half descent club-not like you guys who think were Grenoble.
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By the way Sidney-”and your players are poor,only Bastos are good so you shut the fuck up”. Well simply that is Bullshit !
Hangeland-Arguebly bar Vidic,the best defender, in the best league in the world. so yer you could say he is poor(by the way some people are voting for him to be the premier league player of the year)
Sakho-Yer hes shit despite him being the youngest ever captain in the league and having a great season by helping PSG to QF of Uefa cup and like second in the league and one of the best young defenders around-but obviously hes shit or “poor”.
Bastos-Yay we agree on something !!
Thiago Neves-Courted by the worlds big clubs and already a selecao international-yer hes shit.
Erdinc-Shit again,despite being the young player of the year in France last season and a Euro semi finalist at the age of 21 and 21 goals for a struggling side in Ligue 1 over the last year or so-yep hes shit. ((NOOOT))Posted from
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Re: Hangeland – I’ve mentioned him a few times on here as I’m a season ticket holder at Fulham and he is world class, I’m not sure why Sidney Govou is dismissing him as poor. With him in the team we’ve conceded the fourth least amount of goals in the league which is a huge achievement – a lot of it is down to Hangeland and everyone is naturally desperate to keep hold of him with the eagles circling. It’s not purely down to Hangeland though, as the way the team plays football is what matters most, players track back and the team keeps it’s shape and is very well organised which makes life easier for the defenders. Even our Centre fowards have a say in our defensive record – Bobby Zamora is a target man who holds the ball up very well and allows us to keep possession etc.
Ronan – the reason everyone gets frustrated is that we’ve just had it (I certainly have and I repeat the same words a lot of the time here) with how you clog up the board talking about transfer targets and not actually about the football. People here are interested in the games Lyon have played and what’s working well and what isn’t. The ‘football manager’ comments are a dig at your narrow minded way of looking at the game, you think that problems can boil down to personnel when things run a lot deeper than that in football. There are less good discussions about the games and the team since you’ve been on the board and you always deflect that by talking about transfers – just talk about the football more as it seems you never do.
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To outline what I’m saying, look how great a discussion they have on this thread http://france.worldcupblog.org/team-news/evra-is-unhappy-with-french-fans.html (9 Champs Leagues excluded) where they don’t have all this rubbish chat getting in the way
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Ronan, Sam summed up part of the problem I have (and perhaps others too) with your “buy X & sell Y” vision of football. The names you can put down on the paper are just a small part of success. You seem to have a very one-dimensional view on players’ aspirations (”if Lyon is a bigger club than where they are they’ll want to come”) too that I don’t agree with.
As for the actual players you suggest, it’s hard to believe in them when you change every week, and gives the impression you’re following the “goût du jour”. I might be a bitter old man, but most players who have a good month are just flashes in the pan. Especially when they’re young.
I did a Google search (site:lyon.theoffside.com brandao) and the first result was : http://lyon.theoffside.com/team-news/injury-horrors-the-brazilian-edition.html
Go read it and see if you agree with your own “transfers” one year later?
Van Buyten? He’s no longer a starter for Bayern, he’s 31 and is having increasing injury problems.
N’Gog? It’ll be a couple years before we can make a definitive statement, but he hasn’t really impressed for Liverpool this season yet.
De Melo? Not really much I can say. Palermo signed him then dropped him on a free transfer after barely a month because the coach didn’t think he was good enough to even make the reserve squad regularly, and at Lille is 4th choice striker behind the great Frau, Fauvergue and Vittek.
The Shaktar list (”Hladky, Lucarelli, Brandao, Fernandinho, Castillo, Srna, Ilsinho, Jadson, Chygrinskiy”)? If they were all good enough for Lyon, surely they’d have managed to get past the group stage of the CL, no? Oh, Lucarelli’s in Serie B, Bradao is becoming the newest joke in Marseille and Castillo enjoyed his stay at Manchester City so much he went back to Ukraine.
Heitinga hasn’t been bad at all. So far he’s the best you’ve listed.
Barzagli? I don’t rate him much better than Cris or Boumsong this year. Perhaps I saw two particularly bad matches, but against Paris it was a joke in the Uefa Cup. And we’re talking about Paris’s “B” side that had the terrible attacking power of Luyindula and Pancrate for the return leg just as much as Hoarau in the first leg.
For Mathijsen I hope it’s Joris and not Danny (since Danny is languishing in the bottom half of the Eredivie with Willem II). Joris would be decent, but I’m far from sure he’d be an improvement on what Lyon have in midfield now. Especially Toulalan. Hamburg are currently 4th in Germany, 1 point off the leaders, but they have the hardest few games left, including 4 of their 5 closest rivals in the last 9 games, so it’s questionable if they’ll finish in the top 3. Still, Danny would be the second best choice in this list so far, behind Heitinga.
Demichelis would be a very welcome addition to Lyon’s defence, more than anybody else on this list. But since he’s a key player for Bayern I can’t really see him moving to Lyon for anything less than an outrageous bid. Since Bayern are playing Barça we’ll be able to see how well he does against their armada and compare it to Lyon’s.From your 16 “names”, there is 1 that I would welcome but seems quite improbable (Demichelis), two that would be decent substitutes that seem like reasonable transfers, and 13 that are on varying degrees between “too soon to know” (N’Gog) and “great joke” (Brandao, Castillo, Barzagli). Since by the next week you’ve gone on to 16 new players, you can always look at your “lists” and find players who turned into great players of would have been very savvy transfers. But the vast majority are nothing more than flash in the pan comments on par with someone who sees a youtube video of Piquionne and thinks he’s the next Henry.
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I could care less what Ronan is saying, but Shazback, you rate players awful. You practically dissed Shahktar Donetsk’s players on the basis that they aren’t great because they couldn’t get past the group stage in the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE. That simply doesn’t make any sense. So, on that assumption, you must rate Benzema as awful after he stunk it up against Sochaux or maybe Felipe Melo is awful because Fiorentina failed to get passed the group stage. Hmm….I wonder why Dunga called him up to the Selecao. SMH Please Jadson, Fernandinho, Ilsinho, Srna, and Chygrinskiy, hell even Willian are all legit and with the way Lyon have been playing lately, they are definitely good enough to wear a Lyon shirt. I would love to see you rate them if you’ve consistently watched them play. Since you like validated one’s performance based on one single match, ala the Red Bull Salzburg video posted in the link you provided, you should go to youtube and watch Fernandinho’s goal against Tottenham in the UEFA Cup.
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Uh, Jao, we’re not talking about 1 player from a club that didn’t qualify because they were in a hard group. We’re talking about 7 players for a club that was in the easiest (or second easiest) group. Perhaps 1 of those players is good enough for Lyon, but a blanket statement for 7 of them is not. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure at least 7 of Lyon’s players would get into Shakhtar’s starting XI.
I haven’t watched Shaktar week in week out, but I have watched them be less than mighty impressive against Tottenham’s “B” side in the UEFA Cup and in the Champion’s League. A cursory glance over the Ukrainian league standings shows they’re currently 2nd, have scored 33 goals in 21 games and are 12 points behind the leaders, Dynamo Kyiv, who are also the top scorers with 54 goals in 21 games. I guess since he’s the best scorer in the Ukrainian league so far this season you think Ismael Bangoura would be much better than Piquionne. But even Piquionne has had two good seasons. He scored 10 goals for Rennes in one season, and 11 for Saint-Etienne two seasons later. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s not good enough for Lyon.
A good manager could perhaps bring in a few of these players to improve Lyon’s squad, but claiming Lyon need to bring in 8 players one week, and then 8 different the next week is just what we call in france “Mercatix”.
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Ronan, this is for you.
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Good article on how Lyon’s summer signings have fared so far
http://goal.com/en/news/1717/editorial/2009/03/27/1177688/2008-09-transfer-report-card-how-good-were-lyons-signingsPosted from
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Benzema in Real Madrid. He got five years contract, Real only must talk with Aulas, and after that is’t over.
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Shazback, I’m not talking about Bangoura or Piquionne. Piquionne is nothing and Bangoura is OK. That assumption you threw about Bangoura was well off. Clubs scout for talent and how disciplined a player is. Success with the club may be only a small percentage of that. For example, during Toulalan’s last years with Nantes, they sucked and were almost relegated. That didn’t stop Lyon for constantly sending bids Nantes’s way for Toulalan’s services. Why? Because they knew he was a great player. Obviously, you understand my point.
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Shazback-I think youll find Gignac is a flash in the pan,a player who everyone on here rated highly-accept me.Ive found with you your philosophy is “You can have a team of Vercoutre-Gassama-Benzema-Piquionne-Juninho-Pied-Valdivia-Mehamha-Mounier-Cris-Boumsong and if we get the spirit right we can be world beaters”. Well that is bollocks your team has to have more depth and quality than Lyon has now. By the way if you havent checked Brandao is doing well for Marseille. Oh and I can only think of Lloris,Grosso and Benzema who would get into Shakhtars current first 11.
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the news here in brazil is that juninho wants to leave lyon in the next 2 months, he will play at arabia or will come back to vasco da gama
he already made a interview saying that
do you know anything about it?
sorry for the bad english!!
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/rolleyes
Not at you, Jao. Yes, I was pushing a bit, but mainly because of the sheer number of players. There are a few players at Shakhtar that might be interesting additions to Lyon (Srna, Hubschmann, Chygrynsky), but if I pull out 7 players who are all in the starting XI and say that they are better than Lyon’s equivalent players, then I’d expect them to get results that are at least similar to Lyon’s. Or the other 4 players must be really, really bad. In this case, Shakhtar didn’t qualify from a reasonably easy group, and that is an element of proof that all 7 players weren’t good enough to join Lyon, who passed in a harder group (Bayern 12 – 1 Sporting)…
Ronan, Brandao is not yet doing well for Marseille yet. People are still hoping he’s adapting to Marseille’s style of play over the past few games. Even with the goal against Nantes, he’s only got 2 goals in 9games for Marseille (1 goal every 370 minutes). Bakary Koné is at 9 goals in 37 games (1 goal every 288 minutes) and Niang is at 13 in 31 games (1 goal every 182 minutes)… But even more than his return, it’s his slow playing style that Marseille fans are cautious about. They were on fire in the early part of the season mainly due to Niang and Koné being very mobile and carving up space for other players to exploit. With Brandao, Marseille are finding it hard to score more than one goal per game…
For the squad comment (the first one), you’re drawing a strawman. Yes, you do need a certain number of good players to win the CL. However, more than just “good players” you need players that are playing together well. Monaco 2004, Porto 2004. Real Madrid 2004 was mighty impressive : Zidane, Figo, Beckham, Raul, Ronaldo, Casillas, Guti, Salgado, Roberto Carlos, Pavon, Helguera, Cambiasso, Solari, Portillo, Bravo… Arsenal 2004 wasn’t too bad either : Lehmann, Campbell, Kolo Touré, Clichy, Cole, Lauren, Gilberto Silva, Vieira, Edu, Ljungberg, Parlour, Pires, Bergkamp, Henry, Wiltord, Kanu, Reyes… Even Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Chelsea, Deportivo or a few other sides had a seemingly better squad. But Porto and Monaco were the better sides. They only had a few “great” players (Deco, Carvalho, Baia, Ferreira; Evra, Giuly, Morientes), but that didn’t stop them from going all the way. Lyon have a few great players (Benzema, Lloris, Toulalan) but the main problem is that Puel isn’t getting 100% out of the other players. Real Madrid have failed (again) to get further than Lyon, and yet they have a whole boatload of “big names” in their squad.
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Shazback-You always mention Monaco and Porto but the thing is a “smaller”teams like those two only win the Cl like once every 12 years or so personaly I dont think we can try to base are success on having an average squad and hoping for a miracle-besides the quality of teams has improve in the CL vastly since 04. By the way do you really consider Lloris,Toulalan and Benzema “great”players because I think there good but not world class. Sure you need players who play well with each other but its not like if you get 11 lads from the pub who are best mates but not good players they will be great. You need players who genuinely have quality and you need depth-yes you need a certain spirit but the first two are as if not more important.
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I’d certainly say Lloris, Toulalan and Benzema are world class players. I think our midfield selection is one of the best in world football and doesn’t need a massive amount of addressing – maybe shed one or two players. But we’re short of players up front and in defence
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL_qHDLTfqk
thats why we have to sign Mancini he is class I seriously doubt anyone we have got right now could do that.
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BTW, I’m celebrating One Year in the Blogosphere with a special 2-day Sx3 today and tomorrow. The winner gets a $50 Tar-Jay Gift Card. Please say you’ll play!
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Some of the people on this blog would probably disagree with me if I said Jessica Alba was fit,she is so hot,but people like Shazback would disagree for the sake of it-I have my opinions you have yours. I think if Lyon had signed half the players I said to we would be a force.
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Hey, watch me make a strawman argument! It’s so much easier to defeat!
Back in february of last year I recapped your list of players to sign… http://lyon.theoffside.com/team-news/mercato-review.html
Since you’ve probably doubled the length of that list, you’re talking about Lyon signing 40-odd players. My argument is that you’re ridiculous when you list different players week in week out, with only a few that actually would be good transfers (from that list the main ones are Diarra, Diego, Mancini and Bosingwa), yet those good transfers are often either already well known, play in a “bigger” club than Lyon, or are angling for a transfer to a “bigger” club than Lyon (eg : Sissoko, Diarra, Mancini, Bosingwa…).
Since when you “list” players you don’t even make the most basis of analyses of why they would be good for Lyon (beyond “he’s really good” or “he’s what we need”), it looks a lot like you really believe that signing 7-9 players each mercato is the way forwards, regardless of the fact that signings need time to adapt to the playing style of the club, settle into their new country, etc.
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Pjanic whoring himself to Madrid, not what I like to see:
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