Pierre Sage in conference (credit: David Hernandez)
When drawing up his wish list for the transfer window, Pierre Sage made it clear that he hoped to reduce his squad. He even gave a specific objective.
After two full days in this winter transfer window, Olympique Lyonnais have already let three players leave. Two sales first, Jeffinho (Botafogo) et Gift Orban (Hoffenheim). We add to this the free departure of Anthony Lopes in Nantes, and we say that the operation to reduce the workforce has started rather well. But Peter Sage expects more, as he has regularly repeated in recent weeks. Thursday, for his back-to-school press conference, he did not change his speech.
“The need is above all to degrease“, he said. A fact, it is true, essential, the club being in the sights of the DNCG. But on a sporting level too, this request from the Rhone coach is understandable. Indeed, he must at each meeting do without three or four elements that he could include in his group.
Four more starts, or even more?
This transfer window should therefore allow OL to rebalance all of this. Asked about the ideal number of footballers he would like to have under his command, Pierre Sage was quite precise. “With the goalkeepers, we were 24 + 4. The ideal would be to be 20 + 4“, he confided. We will therefore not betray any secret by deducing from this sentence that four departures are still hoped for, or even more if indeed, Thiago Almada and Luiz Henrique arrive. It would then take two additional sales to reach this total of 20 outfield players.
