News update

A cold shower. That’s about how I felt watching the Coupe de France game against Nice last Sunday. With the interest and hope aroused by the two previous Ligue 1 and Coupe de France games, we were prepared to celebrate a fairly easy win. I had draft text messages ready to send to the few Nice supporters I happen to know : “good game, too bad”. At least I saved that from my mobile data costs.

So let’s try to pretend this game never existed and do our usual -at least until it is no longer usual- news roundup.

- Reactions to the Coupe de France defeat versus Nice : what they said about it

Jean-Michel Aulas : “This is the scenario of the Coupe de France where away from home it is always complicated. We missed something from two or three strikes in the first half. There was a decisive save from Letizi. We had the best opportunities but we were unable to adapt to the context. We may have been too sure of ourselves. Some players were well below their individual value. We will have to question ourselves and win the game next Saturday at Valenciennes. The cup was one of our goals so it’s a pity. We will have to try to take advantage to say we have less work than our opponents.”

Claude Puel : “In Nice, the performance was not consistent with what we must do collectively and individually. There were not the demands that we must show every time. It is a call to order. We must learn from it. There is a requirement as far as regularity is concerned, whatever the opponent. I expected more from some players, it’s true. This shows that we are still under construction. This game was a good wakeup call. We know that these cup games are always special. But the elimination does not undermine the ambitions of the club. The championship did not suck up all of our energy”. Really? It wasn’t obvious on the pitch last Sunday…

Jérémy Toulalan : “We had our chances, but our shots were not very dangerous. We had control of the game. We were lacking in power and we were worried about their long ball game. We knew it would be tough in the challenges and we did not necessarily answer this. It’s disappointing because we came here to win. We still have the championship and the Champions League. Now it’s up to us to impose ourselves in Valenciennes so let’s not dwell on it too much.”

Hugo Lloris : “It’s a personal and collective defeat … There has to be disappointment when you get eliminated from the competition. With the qualities of our team, we should have done better … I hope this match will serve as a lesson to put things straight in the league. This competition was a goal … Now we focus on something else, we think of the championship. Nothing is done yet, and we must win a lot of games beginning with Saturday, which is of the same kind as the match we played in Nice … A strong team that will exert a physical impact.
Comparatively, the elimination from the League Cup is anecdotal. When you leave a game against Paris like that, you leave with no regrets because we gave everything. Unfortunately PSG won. But against Nice we have many regrets, because we did not give ourselves the means to win this encounter, we played 20 or 25 minutes in the second half where we had some opportunities …”

- The transfer window
Outgoing : Now that ex villain-new Villan Jean II Makoun left the OL boat, the club says nobody’s leaving. One individual may be granted the right of being loaned : “We will see if there is an opportunity to send Belfodil out on loan that is interesting for him and the club”, Puel said.

The ever present rumours -in an otherwise fairly quiet winter market- say that Galatasaray is keen on having Kim Kallström. But it seems this interest is not reciprocal, so this shouldn’t go very far, unless they put such a pile of notes on the table that OL asks KK reconsidered his options. This being said, it seems giving a push to a major player who doesn’t want to leave isn’t something OL does in general : in the summer, they had received a very decent offer for Gomis (13 M€ plus bonuses) and were ready to consider it; but Bafe said no and the club didn’t insist. Other targets from the turkish club allegedly include Lovren…Good luck.

- The infirmary
Once empty, it saw the visits of Pjanic, Kolo and Lovren who took the opportunity of the current period without too many games to get wisdom teeth surgery. You never know, they could have all popped up two days before playing the Real…

- also…Unexpected : Former Brasilian OL captain Claudio Caçapa is back in French football. The 34 y.o. back had been in Cruzeiro for the last 2 seasons (only playing 23 games). He signed for 6 months with Evian TG, currently second of Ligue 2 and likely to land a L1 spot next season.
And, still in the “the former Lyonnais have a soft spot for L1″ series, Mahamadou Diarra is leaving Madrid for Monaco. Probably looking for a higher-profile coach than Mourinho, he found Laurent Banide. Some guys are lucky.

That’s it for now…

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Category: Team News and Rumors