Lyon struggles to win the derby and prolongs the fall of Saint-Etienne

The Lyonnais will say that the main thing is to win the derby, and they will surely be right. But the narrow success, acquired on Friday January 21 against the rival Saint-Etienne (1-0) for the opening of the 22^e day of Ligue 1, will not hide the great difficulties that OL are going through in the game.

On the Saint-Etienne side, things are clearer: sixteen games from the end, Ligue 2 is approaching at high speed. The Greens have chained a seventh straight loss in the league, and continue to drag themselves to last place in the standings. This 124^e derby in history will not have been the hoped-for click for either of the two teams.

Quite the contrary even for the winners, Lyon, given their inability to technically master a meeting that they should have made easier. With this second consecutive victory after that obtained just as difficultly in Troyes on a penalty (1-0), on January 16, OL only rise, provisionally, to tenth place, six points behind Marseille (3^e).

Unambitious content

In front of 5,000 spectators in a 60,000-seat stadium due to the gauges imposed by the State and the health crisis, it was Moussa Dembélé who gave the advantage to the Lyonnais by transforming a penalty awarded logically for a fault committed on him -even by Timothée Kolodziejczak (1-0, 15^e).

But faced with Stéphanois adopting an ultra-defensive game plan imposed on them by the many absentees in their workforce, Olympique Lyonnais delivered a match without ambition. Dembélé was totally isolated up front and weaned off the ball before being replaced on the hour mark by Tino Kadewere, and the players expected to lead the game, Houssem Aouar and Lucas Paquetà, were quite disappointing.

Thus, OL gave ASSE the opportunity to grow bolder and even get back into the game with a header from Mahdi Camara diverted by Anthony Lopes shortly before half-time. Saint-Etienne coach Pascal Dupraz felt the excitement of the Lyonnais, and tried to cause a spark with the entries of Bakary Sako, Jean-Philippe Krasso and Sada Thioub, three attackers who joined Arnaud Nordin.

The Lyon coach fixed on his fate at the end of February

Without success, for lack of sufficient talent to create chances and reverse the course of things even if the Greens dominated the second period. Their goalkeeper Paul Bernardoni nevertheless had to intervene on an attempt by Kadewere (74^e) while OL badly negotiated a few offensives.

“What’s encouraging is that the boys don’t give up, positive Pascal Dupraz, the Stéphane coach recently arrived on the bench of the Greens. But our contents must be better to avoid giving goals to the opponent, and to score points so that we get out of this last place”.

For their part, the Lyonnais will now go to the revealer against Marseille, Monaco, Nice, Lens and Lille. We will then know what their real potential is. And at the end of February, an important deadline presents itself: the one set by President Jean-Michel Aulas to take stock of the club’s collaboration with coach Peter Bosz, who arrived at the start of the season but whose results are disappointing.

“It is an important and deserved result”, said the latter after the meeting. ” We concede fewer chances but we have to score more and play better, that’s for sure.”, added the Dutch coach lucidly.

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