Zapping Goal! Football club LOSC, OL, Monaco, OM: Top 10 sales from L1 to the Premier League
“On Saturday, ASSE won in Angers (1-0). It was anything but a heist with a hang-up goal. Bordeaux, Nice, Rennes and now Angers … In recent times, Saint-Etienne has achieved the feat of being totally “illogical”. This team wins where we least expect it. At the Raymond-Kopa stadium, the Greens dominated. They also almost got caught on a goal from Loïs Diony – which would have been a hell of an irony – but in the end, it was a great victory. Faced with the SCO, we saw an applied and serious ASSE. What we unfortunately see only too rarely in Geoffroy-Guichard on the match which precedes or the one which follows.
I do not explain the difficulties of the Greens at home this season. If I had my idea on the question, I would call Claude Puel to give him the solution. It is quite difficult to understand. Perhaps this Saint-Etienne team is not sufficiently armed to play the game. At home, we often tend to think that we must dominate and win. Outside, it’s always easier to be tempted to play against. Especially when you have fast players like Hamouma or Nordin. It could be an explanation. Not the only one necessarily.
“Khazri is not the Zorro of the end of the season but …”
In Angers, Saint-Etienne was able to count on a good Wahbi Khazri, scorer. Could it be the x factor in the race to maintain? When we have players with talent and experience, we can only be more reassured to carry out this type of battle. I am not denying the “young” project that I have been calling for for years and which also emerges from this Saint-Etienne with the Moueffek, Gourna and others, but it is important, in this kind of period, to be able to count on some items that have the bottle. Bouanga, Boudebouz, Khazri or Hamouma to name only the offensives. Coming back to Khazri, he has been heavily criticized this season. He didn’t do everything right. He gets angry easily and takes too many boxes for my taste. But it didn’t hurt everything either. We all still have in mind his extraordinary goal like OM two years ago. The very pretty one against Angers as well. The general interest of the team must go above all past controversies. I’m not going to make Khazri the “Zorro” at the end of the season for ASSE either, but I think he can be important in this complicated period. For me, he’s still one of the leaders of this team. It’s up to him to show it over time.
“The three points gleaned at Angers will perhaps be those of maintenance”
What should be remembered from the weekend in the race to maintain (in addition to the victory of Nantes on the lawn of PSG) is that once again ASSE was able to score points when needed . Now we will have to optimize this performance on Friday night against Monaco. It will not be easy against one of the favorites for the title. So far, Saint-Etienne has not been able to take the right turns. For me, the three points gleaned from Angers will perhaps be those of maintenance. In any case, they move Lorient and Nîmes a little further away, while allowing us to pick up on Strasbourg. In this race to maintain a little stomach ache and where you can only count on yourself, Saint-Etienne to be a little more relaxed ”.