In great difficulty in Ligue 1 since the start of the season, AS Saint-Etienne hopes to take advantage of the next winter transfer window to strengthen its squad a little.
Before his match of fear against Metz on Saturday afternoon, the Forez club is plunged into a big crisis. Unable to win any game since the start of the season, ASSE is the red lantern of the French championship with five points in 11 days. Despite this very poor record, Sainté is not really left behind in the fight for maintenance, knowing that his two predecessors, namely Metz and Brest, are only one unit ahead. So the Greens will try to raise their heads at the end of the year, before starting again in 2022? Claude Puel hopes so. For this, Sainté may be able to count on a good recruitment next January. Which will be a necessity, as ASSE will lose many executives for a few weeks due to CAN. Considering that between January 9 and February 6, players like Khazri (Tunisia), Bouanga (Gabon), Neyou (Cameroon) or Sow (Guinea) will potentially be absent.
“Not worried by the fact that almost all of our scorers are leaving for CAN”
Not much to worry about the Stéphanois coach, who relies on his scouts to bring good players back to Sainté. “Our recruitment unit looks at all points, and in particular concerning certain absences due to CAN. These are things that are annoying of course, because we are impacted, and the selections can retain up to 28 players instead of 23 and eliminate them before the competition, so that seems very problematic for the clubs. I am confident that we will increase the number of our scorers by the winter break. So I’m not worried about the fact that almost all of our scorers at the start of the season are going to the Africa Cup of Nations ”, launched, on the EVECT site, Puel, who knows however that his club will not have the means to buy new players on the transfer market… A trend confirmed last summer, when ASSE had no recruited as Ignacio Ramirez as part of a loan at the very end of the transfer window.