Stade Malherbe Caen: December + January 2010-11

Welcome back to another two months of french ligue 1 football. I’d like to thank you all guys for following my progress, and I really take every thing you say to heart.

Here is a quick look at the games for december and january ( I’ve played the first game of december against Bordeaux.)

I’m coming of a great win against the predicted top candidate, Bordeaux. I’ve had some up and downs before that game and I really hoped we could build on this win and start notching up a few good results to cement our position amongst the top 6 at least.

First up to test our new won confidence was — AS Nancy Lorraine

Things started out great. 1-0! Dady certainly proved to be brimming with confidence as he was the one to put us infront after just 7 minutes of play. After the goal both teams fougth out most of the battles in midfield, out of harms way for both goalkeepers. Nothing else of value would actually happen until the final 10 minutes of the game. 1-1! Barrada scored Nancy’s equaliser in the 84th minute after a fine team move. And then just a few minutes later 1-2! Ca scored a wondergoal. He recieved a pass from Dia on the right wing and just took aim from over 30 yards away and struck it with such force that Thebeaux had no way of saving that ball. It was literally on fire..  I mean the graphics engine isn’t updated with fire effects yet, but I’ll send an e-mail with this goal to SI Games and ask for there opinion in the matter.

We weren’t playing that attacking football I’d like to see and I haven’t found the right formula just yet. I’m not too confident about the coming games if we can’t find a solution. Next up is a rather easy game though. Grenoble Foot.

In hindsight I wouldn’t have called this game ‘easy’. 1-1 was the final score after an early strike from Grenoble’s Ibrahim. Figueroa drew the game level directly after the halftime break but we couldn’t find the winner and had to settle for 1 point.

Grenoble 1 — 1 SMC (Figueroa)

Next up was a break from the Ligue as the French cup was at hand, and opposing me was a lower league club — Compiègne

I tried to use this game for some trouble-shooting setting the attackers differently aswell as the wingers. I usually play with defensive wingers in attack mode. Then I have the strikers set for Defensive striker/attack and Poacher or complete striker/support. I’m hoping changing something here could be enough. The next step is changing the tactial set up, working with width and tempo or passing style or distribution.

Either way. We won 3-0 after two corner goals from Kryvtsov and a poahcer goal from Morientes. Things wasn’t working better than before as the other team was to weak to get any real answers.

The Ligue is back on track — SMC — Lorient

This game we really took control of possession. Lorient couldnät create much from their attemps and it was mostly Blue domination over the whole field, winning most duel both on ground and in air. Figueroa scored two goals in the first half before Gameiro could draw one back for Lorient. I’m happy with the display but we still only created one clear chance at goal while Lorient actually had 2 clear chances.

Coming up was Powerhouse team Lyon, and having played this unstable I was afraid that we could be up for a real thumping. But we have a nack for hurting the big teams this season…

Lyon — SMC

There’s not much to say after watching this game. No one could create any real chances and we neutralized each others without us playing destructively. 0-0

The French cup was back again, this time with a much better opponent — Sochaux.

FC Sochaux — SMC 2-0

This scoreline felt really unfair as they had no real chances to score and yet they found the back of the net twice. As you see, my commentary is starting to get thinner as we’re playing worse and worse. I’m a bit troubled at this point. On the bright side I’m not really interested in the cups, I’m just focusing on getting good position in the Ligue.

Last game of january is against Auxerre.

Things weren’t going my way…

We have some things to work out. On another note we’ve sold Hertaux, our 4th central defender. I got 1,8 M £ for him and Valladolid was the buyers. I had no real need for another defender to replace him, instead i focused on getting my wages balanced and tried to sign a player with an outgoing contract for next season. Rusol chose Benfica over us, Jeremy Helan chose Mallorca but i got another player. Artem Milevskyi is coming to Caen in July!

I also signed young keeper Matej Delac on loan from Chelsea. My reserve keeper Perquis was getting annoyed and I thought he wasn’t good enough to even be on the bench and seeing as Thebeaux isn’t overachieving exactly Delac might get his chance right away to put some pressure on Thebeaux.

Here’s a quick look back at the results these 2 months.

We’re still holding a 6th position in the league. Most of the top teams are not playing that convincingly and have a few draws and defeats to their name. Thanks to that I’m not that far of the leading pack. Sorry for forgetting the pic of the league table, as I’m already some way ahead of february. I just like putting up posts in the evening and I had no time to post the last few days. Bear with me as things will improve.. I have a post coming up covering February — March tomorrow night probably.

Cheers,

Majk