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Stuck at the bottom of the classification and flushed out by the Covid-19, Lorient was able to snatch a vital victory Wednesday against Dijon. Nothing to be deluded before receiving the PSG Sunday (3:00 p.m.) on behalf of the 22nd day of Ligue 1, but enough to dream of maintenance again. Follow Lorient PSG live.

On Wednesday, the hearts of Lorient supporters stopped beating for a moment in the 62nd, when the referee issued a red card for the left side Yohann Etienne, player of the reserve propelled for the first time in Ligue 1 to compensate for the absences due to Covid.

Led 2-1 at the break, the Hakes had just equalized but knew the imperative victory on pain of already setting foot in Ligue 2. Fortunately, after intervention of the VAR, the red turned to yellow. “The turning point of the match”, for Christophe Pélissier.

Starting again, the Lorientais pushed until the 96th minute and this free kick from Enzo Le Fée, deflected with the head by Andreaw Gravillon, which Anthony Racioppi captured… and deposited behind his goal line.

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“We stay alive”, rejoiced Pelissier, the “sorcerer” who has always known how to build his teams but also maintain them. While its president Loïc Féry has been repeating for weeks that he remains the man for the job, he saw his supercharged players rushing towards him to celebrate this precious victory around him.

“A founding act”

“We considered this match to be a final. Winning like that, it lifts us up, ”said Gravillon. “After the first half, the coach cheered us up, he had very, very strong, very moving words. We came back with rage “.

A time behind, Lorient has therefore reunited with the back pack, tied on points with Dijon and Nîmes, three lengths from Nantes and four from Saint-Etienne, and with a late match against Nîmes to be played at the end of February.

After the Parisian steamroller, the coming weeks promise to be tricky, with a total of 9 matches in one month and many questions about the reaction of organizations potentially weakened by Covid-19, which affected 14 professional players in January .

Pélissier therefore relies above all on the mental resources of a group which he describes as “united and united” in the face of adversity and would like to make the victory against Dijon “a founding act”.

“Athletically, we knew we wouldn’t be 100%, but we would be there mentally […]. The teams that will perform well in the second part of the season are those who will mentally be the strongest, the most united ”.

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25 million losses

In this battle, the Hakes can rely on a dense and efficient attack, currently carried by the Nigerian Terem Moffi, who has just scored four goals in four matches.

Lorient, on the other hand, is fishing heavily in defense with an average of two goals conceded per game this season, rising to three goals per game this month. “We tried everything. The five-a-side defense, the change of players… ”sighed Pélissier after the 5-2 defeat against Monaco in early January.

The club is actively looking for a central defender before Monday night, but if several names have circulated in the press, nothing has been done yet. “It’s very complicated but I have high hopes,” Loïc Féry explained last week to the local press.

It must be said that the Mediapro fiasco and the lack of ticketing places a considerable strain on the club’s budget. According to Féry, Lorient will charge around 25 million euros in losses this season, or 57% of expected income excluding transfers, including 20 million related to the evaporation of TV rights.

In this context, maintenance could become a matter of survival: “The current issues go much further, but the economic equation will obviously be less difficult to resolve in Ligue 1”, explained Féry.

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