2012-2013 Ligue 1 Match Thread [R]

another good day!

great to see the fighting spirit after giving up that first goal. they really finished the match off with a serious winning attitude.

 

i think the key word is team effort. but the standouts for me were alex, steed, max and above all sam umtiti. what a freaking boss he's become.

for the short time he got to play mvuemba looked real good. and benzia too.

i see vercoutre is getting charged with a mistake on the goal but though i was a long way away i think he did about as well as he could. just to box that ball at all took some pretty good reactions.

i was also surprised at the brouhaha about the péno refused to licha since it looked like yarien to me but if the picture on olweb is the right play it really was stone cold.

 

he's a good player when he's good but seems inconsistent and with the depth chart so stacked at his spot one bad outing means a really long wait for the next chance.

the big mystery for me is dabo. he was usually excellent in the first half of the season, then disappeared without a trace. and though umtiti is part of the reason i'm surprised we don't see more of umtiti in central defense and dabo at LB.

 

on the foul by ecuele-manga, i didn't even think he'd touched him, but it's clear now that that semelle might have deserved red even if there had been no annihilation. it was nasty.

on the goal allowed by vercoutre from my angle it looked like aliadiere was much closer to him. and again looking at it on video i see he really should have done much better.

lopes should get a couple of league matches, since there are no other competitions. but he boxes the ball a lot too, and so did hugo. and so does sarah. i suppose you could blame that on bats, but in fact all GK's box the ball a lot these days. it appears its the new balls are behind that.

 

the biggest joy in this match for me was seeing all the players who came out of the lyon training center :

Yassine BENZIA - born 1994
Samuel UMTITI - born 1993
Rachid GHEZZAL - born 1992
Jordan FERRI - born 1992
Clément GRENIER - born 1991
Enzo REALE - born 1991
Alexandre LACAZETTE - born 1991
Maxime GONALONS - born 1989
Lamine GASSAMA - born 1989
Steed MALBRANQUE - born 1980
Ludovic GIULY - born 1976

and left on the bench:

Anthony MARTIAL - born 1995
Anthony LOPES - born 1990

THIRTEEN players trained by OL. i wonder if that's a record?

 

there were 11. whoever counted 9 forgot all about steed and ludo. and that's the best part, the proof that it's not just one bumper crop but a continuous flow that's been coming out of tola for over 20 years.

 

turpin's 15 minutes are up in my book.

i can't blame lyon since even if RG says he wasn't calculating that's a decent calculation. but from OM it's harder to fathom.

 

i agree with you. take it up w/ RG!

 

how did he do?

 

this is weird : going through my pockets this morning i found a ticket for the sochaux match, but have ABSOLUTELY NO RECOLLECTION of being at gerland last night. do you think i'm losing my mind?