“It’s hard to lose your place”

Third most used player by Olivier Dall'Oglio this season after Larsonneur and Davitashvili, Dylan Batubinsika left the starting eleven during the matches against Lens and Angers (J8 and J9). In order to regain his place, the 28-year-old defender had to question himself to convince his coach that he could bring more to the team. At a press conference this Thursday noon, the Congolese returned to this pivotal moment in his start to the season: “I questioned myself after my two matches on the bench, I tried to see where I was less good and where I needed to improve to change things. It's hard to lose your place , it's hard to question yourself, especially when things aren't going well for you on the pitch. It's the trap for you when you lose confidence but it's our job, we have to experience this kind of thing. Since the start of our football career, we have learned to manage these situations I didn't necessarily have to react on what I was doing less well but above all on what I was missing to bring something more to the team. I had to do more personally in terms of concentration and in my leadership. .”

The robust Saint-Etienne defender then spoke about his statistical lines in Ligue 1 this season. Among the best players in the championship in terms of interceptions, he is one of the poor students at restarts: “I got into the habit of watching my matches to review what I do on the pitch, the statistics, I don't look too much, sometimes people talk to me about it but that's it. I'm not surprised to being good at interceptions is flattering, especially in my position, and honestly I'm not surprised to not be very good at restarts (smiles). is part of it, I need to gain more confidence in myself on the restart and take more of the game into my own hands and not just do the minimum in this area.”

An analysis shared by his trainer Olivier Dall'Oglio who also spoke about his defender's start to the season: “Batubinsika's statistics? I'm very wary of some of them, there are a lot of them, several search engines too… I'm very careful, I'm not saying that I don't look at them but I prefer to trust my eye and the video is more reliable what I see The duels won for example: what do we mean by duel won? in touch, if I have touched the ball, we consider that the duel is won? Sometimes, we don't really agree with the stats What I saw on Dylan is that at one point he recovered. in question on certain things, in particular on concentration and recovery He reviewed his own images and worked on them. It's interesting and that's what I want, for my players to be able to get over their egos. able to see their flaws and work on them. It was simple at the start but it's intelligent on his part. We saw images of the last matches again this morning, he was precious and went up a notch in concentration.

Recovery is an area where he must progress, he knows it. We have to go from strength to strength, it's not overnight that we can rectify certain things. There was a real effort on his part and I like that.”