Olympique Lyonnais - Back to winning ways

christianms95

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Club history
The club was formed under the multisports club Lyon Olympique Universitaire in 1899 but was first nationally established as a club under its current name Olympique Lyonnais in 1950. The club won its first Ligue 1 title in the 2001-2002 season and went on to win it a historic seven times in a row. In the record setting period from 2002 to 2008 the club also went on to win 6 of its 8 Trophée des Champions. The club has also won Coupe de France 5 times, Coupe de la Ligue once in 2001 and the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 1997.
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Stadium
Olypmique Lyonnais have played at Stade de Gerland since the clubs founding in 1950. The stadium was built in finished in 1926 and has 40.494 seats.
On 1 September 2008, Olympique Lyonnais president Jean-Michel Aulas announced plans to create a new 60.000-seat stadium which would also include state-of-the-art sporting facilities, two hotels, a leisure center, and commercial and business offices. On 13 October 2008, the project was agreed upon by the French government and in 2012 the landscaping and construction started. It is schedueled to be done in January 2016 and is one of 12 stadiums for the upcoming Euro 2016. Stade des Lumières as it will be called will have 59.186 seats.
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Sorry to those who voted and have waited for the first update. I decided to play a bit in advance and have updates ready since I'm going on a week long holiday and didn't want a week without any updates.
 
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Save intention and vision

The intention of this save is to break the clubs own record by winning eight Ligue 1 titles in a row.
I want to get these titles by mainly buying french players but even more so by producing our own players and give our youth the time they need to develop.

Squad

Our most important players this season will probably be club captain Maxime Gonalons who will control the midfield, experienced winger Valbuena and our only ready made striker Lacazette who we will be very dependent on as I can't really see where the majority of our goals should come from otherwise.


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A very nice and allround good squad to start off with. I only see one position that needs strengthening in the first XI and that's the AML position where Fekir is our best option, even though he is best at AMC. Other than that we have Cornet and Ghezzal but both of them are still too raw to be in the first XI eventhough Cornet has the potential.
Other than the AML a backup striker would have been nice.

Promising youth players

There are quite a few promising players at the club, both in the first team but also in the reserves. Players such as Mammana, Lucas Tousart, Maxime D'arpino, Houssem Aouar and Maxwel Cornet stands out.


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Transfer (in)activity
As I have disabled the first transfer window and the club doesn't have any room in the already negative wage budget, there weren't any incoming transfers or loan deals.
Outgoing was obviously only loan deals where the most prominent were Steed Malbranque going on loan to Stade Rennais FC until his contract runs out and Maxime D'arpino to AJ Auxerre to gain some first team matches as I decided to keep Tousart closer to the first team than Maxime.

Pre-season
A total of six games awaited us before the season will kick off against PSG in the Trophée des Champions match.

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Some pretty easy pre-season games before a tougher test against Olympiakos to up the speed of our play a bit before the PSG game.
Surely the results could have been better, but I wanted to give as many players game time and of course make sure that players in and around the first XI got to know the tactis as much as possible.

A look at the tactics
I opted to go with two primary tactis.
A 4-1-2-2-1/4-1-4-1/4-5-1
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This will be our primary tactic for the first season. It will be used against tougher sides at home and in most away games. It makes sure that we have good cover in the middle of the pitch with three solid midfielders who all have good defesive attributes but players who can also move the ball around well. Other than that it looks to exploit 3 of our best players with fast moving attacking play from Fekir, Valbuena and Lacazette.

Backup tactic - 4-2-3-1
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Our 4-2-3-1 tactic will be used against easier opposition and when we are a goal behind and need to be more offensive. This tactic invites to more freeflowing attacking play where our fullbacks will come blazing on both flanks opening up for overlaps and overall just more players in the final third of the field.

Coming up - Trophée des Champions match against PSG
 
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Trophée des Champions vs PSG

Prematch and lineups
Obviously PSG went into this match as favorites but without Zlatan I felt that we had a chance of coming out of this match with a trophy and more importantly, the psychological advantage going into the season.

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Kick off - 0'
To be honest this match started off as a quite boring one with both teams prefering to have men behind the ball and moving it around with limited risks of getting hit by a counter.

8' - Lacazette on the crossbar
After a nice dribble past two men Lacazette was clear just inside the penalty area. Kurzawa came across in the last second to disturbe Lacazette's shot that hit the crossbar even though Sirigu was outmaneuvered and went to the wrong side.

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11' - Sirigu save
Jordan Ferri with a nice ball over the head of Thiago Silva saw Lacazette with a free run towards goal although from a bad angle. David Luiz came across to put pressure on Lacazette who saw a chance at the far post but Sirigu made a great save.

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45' +2 - Red card for Yanga-Mbiwa
Just before half time Yanga-Mbiwa made a horrendous two-footed tackle on Cavani in an area where he wasn't dangerous at all. Stupid tackle and a deserved red card.

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45' - Half time
A great half right until Yanga-Mbiwa got a red card. We dominated the game and had two open chances where Lacazette probably should have scored at least once. PSG were only hitting the target from far out and were not really dangerous.
Corentin Tolisso comes on for Sergi Darder and Gonalons was put down as a CB as I didn't want to play the newly signed youngster Mammana so soon in as big a match as this. The tactic was changed to a 4-4-1 where we would look to hit them on the counter over the wings with Fekir, Valbuena and Lacazette.

66' - Anthony Lopes double save
After a corner Krychowiak won a header and placed it right at the feet of Thiago Silva who fired a shot at the far corner but Lopes showed great reactions and came across to tip it wide. Cavani snapped up the ball out wide and fired a shot at Lopes who was positioned right and blocked the shot.

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90' +2 - Ben Arfa volley

Right as i thought we managed to get to the penalty shootout, Marquinhos was free on the right wing and recieved the ball to deliver a well placed cross right in to Ben Arfa who managed to escape the Marking of Gonalons. Luckily Ben Arfa hit Lopes and even though I thought we would loose for a second the game went to penalties.
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Penalty shootout

PSG
Scored: Kurzawa, Thiago Silva, Krychowiak

Missed: Verratti, David Luiz

Lyon
Scored: Lacazette, Valbuena, Cornet, Ferri

Missed: Jallet


 
Maybe you're going in too much detail? The font and everything else is perfect tho.
 
Thanks for the criticism. I know it has started quite detailed but I did that to get the groundwork done. For the future i plan on just making monthly updates with results and then seperate posts for anything noteworthy although I probably will make as detailed match reports for finals etc.
 
Thanks for the criticism. I know it has started quite detailed but I did that to get the groundwork done. For the future i plan on just making monthly updates with results and then seperate posts for anything noteworthy although I probably will make as detailed match reports for finals etc.

Ah ok. Thought you'd do all the games this way and that it would be much work.
 
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Season expectations
I will mainly focus on doing good in the league and champions league and play youngsters and backups in the two cup competetions.
The expectation for Ligue 1 is to qualify for the Champions League and perhaps put pressure on PSG if they fail to dominate the league.
In the Champions League we will look to qualify for the knockout stages and if that fails try to win the Europa League we expect to finish at least 3rd.
As mentioned above the cup competetions aren't a goal for the first season but hopefully we will advance in at least one of them to make sure the youngsters and backup players will get game time.

August's games

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An okay start to the season with three wins and two draws although not against the toughest oppositions. We were only getting two results, either a 4-1 win where we smashed the opponent or a 1-1 draw where we had to fight our way to 1 point.
Would have liked to keep a clean sheet in one of our big wins but that didn't happen.
Hope we will eliminate the draws in the future and get better at keeping the ball out of our own net.

Player of the month
Who other than...



With an astonishing 9 goals in 5 matches Alexandre Lacazette has shown he is ready to lead us to great things. Hopefully he can keep the consistency over the course of a whole season and not just in glimpses.

 
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Champions League group

View attachment 133756We were drawn up against Juventus, Leverkusen and AA Gent. Not an easy group but not the hardest one either. We should as a minimum qualify for the Europa League knockout stages although the hope and goal is to still secure a top two spot in the group and make it to the Champions League knockout stage instead.

All Champions League groups



September games

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A great month in Ligue 1 and a horrible start to our Champions League campaign.
Bakary Kone's goal against SC Bastia also means that all of our central defenders have already scored their first goal in the season. Other than that our win against Olympique Marseille was a highlight. We smashed them and could have won even bigger.
As mentioned our start to the Champions League hasn't been great with a draw against a side we should win against 9 out of 10 times probably. The Leverkusen result was fair as they we the better team by far and their pressing game was outstanding. These two results will make it tough for us to qualify for the next stage with two matches against Juventus coming up.


Player of the month

Mathieu Valbuena gets it this month with 3 goals and two assists and no other stand out player like last month. He is still adapting to the right wing as this is where I play him and it isn't a natural position for him yet.


 
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Injury blow

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Fekir out for about 6 months(Injured on 10. October) before rebuilding his fitness means he won't play much football before next season. This means we will have to play Cornet an Ghezzal. A youngster and a player who doesn't have the required qualities will have to fill in atleast untill January where I will probably look for a new player for the AML position.
 
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October update

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With Fekir out we struggled to find the net for almost the whole of November which just confirms that an AML is a priority in January. Result wise it was not what I hoped to see and especially the defeat against Monaco was devastating. They outplayed us on every inch of the pitch and we were actually lucky to "only" loose with 3-0. The boys showed great character to come back after the Monaco defeat and win 5-1 against Lorient where especially Tolisso stood out and also marked it with a goal.

The draw against Juventus means we have two points after three games. Luckily AA Gent still only have the one point they got against us which means we should be okay to at least reach the Europa League.

Player of the month



No player really stood out this month but Corentin Tolisso gets it after some solid performances throughout the month. He played all five matches and didn't really have bad game, not even in the big loss against Monaco. He crowned it with a MOTM performance against Lorient where he also scored a goal.
 
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Stadium completion

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Early Christmas gift as the board on 8. December announced that Stade des Lumières was ready for the club to move in and start playing football. Hopefully we can turn this new stadium in to a fortress right from the off.

This means we now have the third biggest stadium in France and the second biggest in Ligue 1 where only Stade Vélodrome, home to Olympique Marseille is bigger with about 67.000 seats. Of course Stade de France is the biggest with about 81.000 seats and home to the national team.

Stade des Lumières

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Sorry for the inconvenience, the "stadium completion" post obviously shouldn't have been posted before the november update but i got october and november mixed up..
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November update

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A fantastic start to the month with a 2-0 win against Juventus. This meant we had 5 points after 4 games and in 2. place although with same points as Juventus.

Champions League group after 4 games


The Metz game was a real dissapointment and will probably one of this seasons low points. I think the guys were a bit baffled by the win over Juventus and though they could walk on water which they obviously couldn't. A healthy experience for the young guys but a costly one as well.

In the PSG game we were very conservative partially because of the Metz game and also because of the importance of the match in general. We tried to play on the counter as we couldn't afford to lose and got an acceptable draw.

Alexandre Lacazette gave us an early lead against AA Gent which mean i could bring on some youngsters and give a rest to Lacazette himself and Valbuena and Kalulu and Cornet who took over got a goal each themselves. A great win which meant we could finish 2. in the CL group if we could manage at least a draw against Leverkusen in the final match as Juventus failed to win against them and got a 0-0.

The final game of the month saw us going up against rivals AS Saint-Etienne. We got the better of them and won 2-0 in an otherwise boring match that was already decided before half time. Saint-Etienne failed to create any real chances and we were good at keep a hold of the ball and tire the opposition.

Player of the month


Fan favorite Rafael wins the player of the month award with some great performances throughout the month getting an average rating of 8.1 in the 4 matches he participated in.
 
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December games

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A fine month allround. Advaced through to the knockout stages in the Champions League after a draw against Leverkusen and 4 wins out of 5 possible in the Ligue 1. Young players such as Lucas Tousart, Houssem Aouar, Aldo Kalulu, Maxwel Cornet and Thomas Richard started in the Coupe de la Ligue match and they gained valuable match experience in an overtime loss.

Ligue 1 standing after about 20 games

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Champions League group A after all 6 games

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This means we wil face ... in the first knockout round


..Barcelona. Tough fixture where I don't facy our chances at all.

Player of the month


With six goals in six games and a couple assists to add to that Alexandre Lacazette gets the award this month. It's this form we need from him in order to challenge PSG and Monaco for the title.

 
5. January - Welcome to...

Not a player that is needed right now but a deal I couldn't turn my back on when I saw what the selling club wanted for such a big domestic talent.

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A big welcome to the young striker Elie Youan who joins us from FC Nantes for a fee of £800k that could potentially rise to £1.400.000.

The hunt for a left winger continues..

 
18. January - Welcome to..

Finally we got our main transfer target. LOSC Lille haven't been playing well this season as they find themselves in last place. This made me think that we had a chance with Boufal since he didn't even play regularly towards the opening of the transfer window. After all the transfer did take a litlle longer than I would have liked due to Lille's asking price at first. We managed to persuade Boufal to ask for a transfer which ended up with Lille asking for a price we could afford.

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Hopefully Boufal settles in fast as we need him to perform right from the start. He will mainly play as an inside forward on the left wing.
 
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