Busy, busy, busy !

 

Seven clubgowi newsletters this weekend, three today and two each on Saturday and Sunday, I have just sent the first of these with several match previews for today's football and you can read one of them below, but remember the bigger picture !

 

 

France: Ligue 2: Amiens- Niort

 

I spoke ahead of matchday 1 about Amiens and how they were likely to struggle this season given their small budget, lack of experienced options at this level defensively and how they were more vulnerable at home, when the onus was more on them to attack ........

The hosts were the third placed promoted team and the last three to come up in that position, have finished last (twice) and second , so an exciting time of things looks likely at one end of the division or the other. Amiens have one of the smaller budgets in Ligue 2 and will come into this season, you would feel, with survival as their sole objective, but the same was said about Red Star and BEBP last season, who were never in trouble and GFC Ajaccio the year, before who were promoted, so they will take encouragement from that. They were defensively strong last season, especially on the road, where they only lost three times, but they conceded far more freely on home soil, when the onus was on them to make the running. There is a big difference in quality between National and Ligue 2 and Amiens look a little short at the back at this level, goalkeeper Regis Gurtner struggled with relegated Boulogne (his only full season in L2) and was dropped towards the end of that campaign. Yacine Haddou is the only out and out right back in the team and he was in the Nimes squad relegated in 2011, centre back Khaled Adenon has played three seasons at L2 (relegated once, 4th from bottom in another) and Mathieu Fontaine his partner, was deemed surplus to requirements by Reims a few years back. He is injured, Adenon suspended, they tried a defensive midfielder and left back in the middle of the back line in their final warm up game, but have clearly thought better of that and signeed a 20 yo cental defender who has never played any sort of league game, Haddou is not in the squad today. You get the picture, at full strength they have a backline who have never really made the grade at this level and they are not even able to call upon them today, no right back, players out of position and short of experience, this looks a tough L2 baptism.
 

They drew that 1-1, but opponents Reims played 85 minutes + with ten men and Amiens have subsequently lost at both Strasbourg and Clermont on the road, conceding three goals. They have played Monday-Saturday-Tuesday-Friday, so this is the first game for which they have been on the Friday evening training schedule and only for a couple of days. That is a tough start to life at the upper level and they played 45 minutes of those with ten men at Strasbourg last week when Aboubakar Kamara who was playing the sole striker role was sent off. He is suspended today, but otherwise Amiens are set to be unchanged squad wise from the Strasbourg game, Khaled Adenon ( see above) has now returned, but this still looks a weak Ligue 2 backline and I assume they will go back to Jonathan Tinhan up front on his own and he was "dropped" after the opener, he has never thrived above National level (4 goals at a rate of one every 539 minutes !) and is typical in that regard, of many in this sqaud.
 

Niort have drawn both league starts, at home to Lens and on the road to Laval, two teams who look to play largely similar to Amiens, only better and the visitors will not see anything they have not seen in the last two weeks this evening. I watched their 1-1 draw with Laval and was very impressed (not expecting to be btw) they broke with real pace and showed a lot of attacking intent, they could have taken the lead 3-4 times (hit woodwork) before they finally led, kept pressing and nearly took a second and were attacking in numbers when they got hit on the break after previously restricting Laval to largely long range efforts. There was still time for Niort to miss an absolute sitter late, but they were claiming a penalty for the challenge from behind related to that miss and all things considered, they were very unlucky not to win, they look ideally set up to play on the road and if they look as good today, they should collect all three points.

 

 

Amiens : Gurtner, Adiceam - El Hajjam, Lefort, Adenon, Dibassy, N'Gosso, Monconduit, Charrier, Cornette, Tinhan, Bourgaud, Ielsch, Gus. Fofana, Mamilonne, Soumah.