OL: Parce qu'il n'y a qu'une seule Olympique

Good week.

Crushing Marseille 4-1 away and beating Montpellier at home 1-0 while taking the lead in the table.

Grenier played the two matchs as a starter and I find him better than Gourcuff.

Another derby won, haha, Saint Etienne are our bitches

Bastos signed his return.... We played the entire second half with 10 players and still won.

5 points above PSG and OM

Was impressive with 10 men as well

The 16 years old Norvegian midfielder Ulrik Yttergard Jenssen joined our academy for 225 000 euros. This is quite a unusual spending for us on such a young player.

I have no idea about his football value, but we are still looking to strenghten our formation. The success of Gonalons, Lacazette, Grenier, with the upcoming Umtiti, Benzia, Guezzal, Martial are giving unexpected results.

Humiliating elimination in Coupe de France, the title we were holding. Losing 4-3 PKs (3-3 FT) against a third division team is a disgrace.

We touched three times, the post, played away on a horrible pitch in our first match post winter break but it isn't an excuse at all.

It furthers develop my idea that Garde is not a good coach, not the man we need. His repeted errors are costing us a lot. Picking Kone and Fofana as penalty takers can't be defended. Making only one sub is another stupidity.

Garde does it again, after Nicosie, the podium miss, a new humiliation this year. If only we had a good coach.

You really don't think Garde is a good manager? While Aulas is selling all his experienced players and replacing them with kids, Garde is likely going to put OL on the podium. That's not bad at all.

I put this one on the players. Garde picked a strong team... the players just didn't take it seriously enough.

Besides, with Europa, i don't think Lyon has enough depth to be in 3-4 full competitions at one time. As embarrassing as it is, this could be a blessing.

Meanwhile, my OM is broke and we don't even have a great academy to help us... yet we're winning somehow lol. Andre Ayew is not going to CAN thank god.

No, I don't think that Garde is a good manager. Podium is really the minimum for a club like us, and Garde even failed that last year.

Puel could not manage that, Garde did it. Plus Nicosie, plus the atrocious Ligue cup final against Marseille. The only positive point from last year was this French Cup title. But now we are out after the first round of both cups.

Granted we are still in the League race and we are playing good football in it, but I don't think that Garde has any influence on it.

He has no clue about tactics, substitutions. We have a talented squad with some good and motivated young players, but Garde is little more than their good friend, let alone their professional coach. Which is still an improvement over Puel, who was a sadness creator around the club.

from a neutral's standpoint, i feel he is doing a good job. He's had crap CBs and Lovren is always injured. Umtiti is learning... but he's still inexperienced. Reveillere has slowed down a lot and Dabo is also very young and error prone.

Gourcuff, Lisandro and Bastos have also been mostly injured. Grenier geta knocked around too.

So really, he has been working with a bunch of kids. The Lyon of today is nowhere near the Lyon of 4 years ago. Is the potential great? yes there is great potential. But right now, it's a big transition peruod and the hope is that the kids work out. Keeping this team, with all the injuries, on top of the table is an achievement imo.

Take it from a OM fan... the transition from golden years van be brutal. Yours is going as smoothly as it can considering Aulas doesn't want to spend money until the new stadium opens.

Lisandro has given up his Captains armband because he says he has been in poor form and doesn't deserve it.

Gonalons the Captain from now on apparently.

On one hand i feel really proud of LiLo, on the other hand sad about his form.

Great stuff for Gonalons though, been excellent this season and he is kinda captain's material

Hmm seems like Lisandro might be off to Lyon. Monzon going to Fluminese too

Gonalons is really one of the motor of the team, I am really proud at how he developped since his debut. His first success at Anfield was quickly confirmed. He never had any hype nor hope before making it to the first team. he really climbed all the levels to become what he is now.

I was very worried when Toulalan was sold to Malaga, but Gonalons has developped so much now that this move was not that absurd.

Monzon is an epic flop. The "funny" thing is that Aulas wanted to trade him against Grenier during the summer.

Was a good win. Professional in the end.

Don't like Fofana, never will. Gonalons was fantastic and Umtiti.

Hopefully Gourcuff is fit for the next game

On Today match, three hardfought points which put us on top of the league. That was the essential.

Our performance was quite poor, with Garde picking again the wrong team. He is still unable to understand that each time he tries to make us play 4-4-2, it ends up with a 4-2-4 with our midfield being completely outnumbered.

Lovren is still not at his best. Between his injuries, suspension and poor matchs, he has not shine in a while. Umtiti scored the winner, but as a left back he is still struggling. He might replace Lovren as a CB if Lovren bad form continues.

Malbranque suffered from the giant space between him and the attackers, Gonalons was good, solid and scored a goal from a corner to open the match.

The attacks was off and rarely saw the ball. Gomis offered nothing and Lisandro did not touch enough the ball, eventough he seemed quite in form. Guezzal was very bad, lost the ball a lot of times, failed his dribbles.

When Gomis and Guezzal left, replaced by Lacazette and Fofana, we played much better and eventually took control of the play. This 4-2-4 never works.

I hope Garde will understand it one day. Happy to be on the top of the table and to take the three points in these poor matchs.

Monzon is officially off on loan to Fluminense with a buy option.

Complete and total transfert failure. We paid 3 millions+Pied for him. The few times he had played he was completely lost. He looked like he did not belong in the team.
I don't understand how he was making it at Nice. He is not a defender from what we saw and failed to convince as winger too.

The other transfert flop is Mvuemba, 3 millions+Reale too.

Can Grenier play a deep midfield role ?Also i heard he hasnt extended his contract with OL yet

Lyon: Vercoutre, Réveillère, Bisevac, Umtiti, Dabo, Gonalons, Malbranque, Gourcuff, Lacazette, Bastos, Gomis

Lyon on top so far

Evian parked the freakin bus station

2 points dropped

This was a really bad draw... not because of the scoreline only because shat happens in footy. Everything was wrong about Lyon tonight.

First off, Evian was missing 7 starters due to injury and the CAN, including 3/4 of its backline.

Then.... wtf is wrong with Garde and this lineup. My thoughts:
- Dabo is terrible, always has been and always will be imo. Is Lovrent hurt? Much better off playing Umtiti wide.
- Lacazette is not wing player. It's been proven over and over again. He looks lost out there. His confidence is low... didn't help that he missed a one-on-one.
- Gomis is like a traffic cone. He's about as static as it get. Lisandro should be starting ahead of him if healthy every single time.
- Bastos was good. He played very hard at least.
- Malbranque has been off form after being excellent until December.
- Gonalons has had better games. Not very accurate with his passing. I also feels he needs to make runs into the attack when the other team has packed it in so much.
- Reveillere was reveillere
- Gourcuff looked good actually. But his problem was that Malbranque was off, Gomis was immobile Lacazette was lost... so he was all alone. You can't just have one guy be creative on the pitch against ptb.

Again, the result was one thing. But the tactics were bad by Garde imo. One to forget all around.

Lacazette can play on the right wing and be good there. He just can't be left winger.

Yesterday, we easily beat Valanciennes 2-0 away and Lacazette played very well as a winger. His assists on the second goal was very good.

Garde is a poor tactician and nothing new with that. But we were bad since the beginning of the year, bad against Epinal, Troyes and Evian. Yesterday was a much stronger showing, we played very well.

I think that Aulas attacked our confidence and the happiness of the team when he started creating all these rumors mercato to try to sell some players. Gomisn , Lisandro, Gourcuff, Bastos, all these rumours were very nocive for the group.

Now it looks set, Bastos will be the one leaving. With the end of the mercato near, hopefully this bad period is beyond us.

What do you think about the Gourcuff rumor ?

RealGunner wrote:What do you think about the Gourcuff rumor ?

I would estimate that Gourcuff has 75% of chance to stay until the summer and 25% of chance to be loaned with a buying option.

Gourcuff is a ghost, it's like he was never part of the team. Even when he was good, at the beginning of the season, it did not last long and he immediately picked up a new injury. And never really came back after that.

Nice loses at home against Bordeaux and Rennes avoid the defeat at the last minute against Marseille.

That means we are 9 points above the 4th (Rennes). Chances of qualifiying for the CL next year looks good at this point of the season.

Yeah.... only problem for Lyon now is going to be depth. With Bastos gone, Briand almost and maybe Gourcuff, you're looking at a lot of kids being the backups. The only one that is really injury-prone is Grenier. If i were Lyon, i'd actually like to keep Gourcuff until the summer where i can then get a proper backup AM.

Bastos helped with playmaking and he's gone too.

That said, i love the talent of the Lyon youth. A couple of superstars there.

Gourcuff is staying.

Bastos is gone sadly, but one player had to leave between him, Gomis and Lisandro. Briand is staying too, as the deal fell apart with Monaco.

Finally it looks like only Monzon and Bastos will be gone. Monzon was never playing and Bastos is a big loss.

We will se how we are going to do without him. I guess Ghezzal will get a lot more playing time.

Is it true that Gourcuff refused to leave? If so, what a little girl lol.

He refused to leave this winter after advices from his father, it is right.

Smart move, as quick winter transfert often end up in a failures.