After months of slaps, weeks of great worry, half a season of playing the living dead, Lyon bought itself some peace thanks to an immaculate month of February. Even in a season with eleven losses, OL had somewhat forgotten the taste of defeat. The scathing defeat suffered against Lens (0-3) this Sunday is a reminder of the gap which distances Pierre Sage’s men from the contenders for Europe. “The level was too high, Lens is a good team which played in the Champions Leaguenoted Duje Caleta-Car after the meeting at the microphone of Prime. We couldn’t get out of their dry cleaning.”
This merciless spanking brings Lyon back to its current condition, which suits it very well, that of a team which got out of the red zone when everything seemed to condemn it there for weeks. For the rest, the march was too high on Sunday against Lens and the series of four consecutive victories in Ligue 1 came to an abrupt end. “Our story is not decided in one match, we have the impression that we lost everything tonight but the series remains positive“, summarized a Pierre Sage who is always very effective when it comes to positivity.
Lacazette? Of course we missed him
But the coach is right because, basically, Lyon is more than ever on target for its end-of-season objective since the play-off is at a reasonable distance, five points, and four teams still separate it. The Coupe de France semi-final against Valenciennes even offers some unexpected perspectives and Europe is not just a sweet dream. To hope to get to the end of this season without any cold sweat and touch the club’s first trophy in twelve years, we will have to hope very much that nothing more happens to Alexandre Lacazette.
Because the defeat against Lens above all underlined what we already knew: without him, OL lose at least 50% of their nuisance power. It was only Fabio Grosso who thought the opposite this year. A statistic that says it all: OL have never won without him in the four matches in which they had to do without him (one draw, four defeats). “Of course we missed himreacted Caleta-Car. He’s the captain and our best player. Other players can take his role but it didn’t work. It’s a bad evening.“He lacked efficiency up front, especially in the first half.
“I’m not stunned but we lost 0-3 a match where we should have led. History would have been written differently“, rages Pierre Sage. With Lacazette, she could have smiled at an OL who started strong before sinking into mediocre and almost. Lyon has no margin without its striker. Good news, he should return on next weekend against Lorient, so as not to fuel a new negative series which would bring back the old demons…