ASSE ended its season with an accession to League 1. However, the season was not easy in Forez. Laurent Batlles, coach of the team until December, talks about his vision of the season, his time and his mistakes for maligue2.
Fatal injuries for Batlles?
Laurent Batlles : “How do I explain our 5 consecutive defeats when we were coming off a series of 10 unbeaten matches? Because, because, because… Because I find myself with Gautier who is hurt. Before the Angers match, I had five injuries this week. Guys like Larsonneur, Batubinsika, Wadji who is getting hurt again, Bentayg too, I think… Pfff! Is that why we had the defeats, I don’t know what to say. I also don’t want to equate everything with there being injuries. But despite everything, when you lose important players at a certain moment and especially in these matches, pfff! Well, there’s that and there are perhaps also choices… Anyway, I can’t put it all down to the injury aspect. There may also be choices I should have made differently. »
Catastrophic preparation
“We couldn’t play our last preparation match last summer because of a virus. It was terrible. There is a player who lost seven kilos. Briançon, behind, we thought he was recovered, but he trained once, he couldn’t. There are 4 or 5 or even 6 who were like that. We didn’t know what to do anymore. We did analyses. When you start the championship and you’re there… It’s not easy, but you can’t hide behind that. Football is like this: you play your matches and you have to win them, period. »
Grateful former players
“I have had a lot of messages from my former players. Most of the players who are in this squad today, I went out of my way to get them. Sometimes against the advice of many people… They know it and of course I’m happy that the club is coming back. I still live in Saint-Etienne. I’m happy for them too, because there are players who have had difficult times. But we have bonds with some that will last a lifetime. There are many who have sent me messages. I pass the buck to them, because it is also thanks to them that I have had some very good times as a coach. Not so good ones despite everything, but that’s part of life. I got a lot of messages from them about what we experienced in the first part of the season. »
“I was very touched by all the messages from my former players. It doesn’t happen all the time but looking at the play-off matches and all that… Even if there was of course work that was done behind it, in the construction of what we wanted to put in place, we said we had a goal and I think we weren’t that wrong. Now, there was still a winter transfer window which was very interesting for Saint-Etienne, in particular a player that I had wanted for a while, that I wanted to get back because I knew he had stats with Brest. He couldn’t or wouldn’t come at a certain time. »
“I would have liked to start the season with Irvin Cardona” (Batlles, former ASSE coach)
“I would have liked to start the season with Irvin Cardona but that couldn’t be done because there are things in football where when players leave a place, they say to themselves ‘yeah, we’re going go elsewhere, we’ll succeed there”, and in fact since they don’t succeed, they say to themselves “in fact, maybe I’ll revise my copy. » For Niels Nkounkou, it was the same. When we call in the summer off-season, we tell you: “no, we prefer to have a Ligue 1 club, we prefer this, we prefer that. » But when it plays a little less, the players say to themselves “I might as well go to an L2 club that plays the upward trend, that can allow me to get back on track. » That’s why with Loïc and with Jef (Soucasse) and Samuel Rustem, when calling the players, we gave them this speech: “we had a complicated first game, you too. If you have an interesting second part of the season, it’s beneficial for everyone.” This is what often happens. »
