Assignon: “We have to beat ourselves up against the people at the bottom”

Accustomed to the battles for European places, Stade Rennais is currently in the second half of the table, in fifteenth place, after twelve days. The Greens are even ahead of the Bretons with two more points (13 against 11). The Rennes have just changed coach with the arrival of Jorge Sampaoli, who lost to Lille (1-0) for his first.

Lorenz Assignon presented himself to the microphones of journalists and in particular of West France after this meeting. He talks about the complicated phase for his club and now wants to take points against the teams at the bottom of the table: “It's another defeat, it doesn't please anyone, especially us. The new coach who has arrived (Jorge Sampaoli) is trying to instill something with big bases that we will have to put in place. It's going to have to happen quickly, as quickly as possible so that we can get out of this zone. Personally, today, I already found that it was a little more structured than the last two or three matches that we were able to play. Now, we're going to have to work a lot harder to get a lot more. (…) It's certain that it wasn't easy in Lille but now the whole of Ligue 1 is complicated. There are no more easy matches. That may have still existed five or six years ago but that's it, it's over. There are no more easy matches, all the teams have their ideas of play and we must play 100% in every match.

Offensive ineffectiveness? It's necessarily complicated because when we play, we try to win. To win you have to score goals. I think it's going to be a big area of ​​work because it's not from today. This is also where we need to work a little more. (…) Maintenance? In the short term, we have to look at the ranking and we are at the bottom so we will have to fight against the teams at the bottom to be able to first get our heads above water and then go as high as possible. At the moment yes: we have to hit the people at the bottom, we have to take out our fists directly against the people at the bottom.”

Saint-Étienne has been warned, Stade Rennais will want to relaunch on Saturday afternoon as part of the thirteenth day of Ligue 1, facing a team whose stated ambition this season is precisely to maintain their place in the elite.