Grenoble remain pointless

It is difficult for a team to recover after losing few games in a row so you can imagine how Grenoble players feel after losing 12 straight games. The League Cup defeat to Lorient probably wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for 11 defeats in as many Ligue 1 games this term. This is obviously the worst start a team ever had in French top flight and Stade des Alpes is a sad place to be at the moment. Coach Mecha Bazdarevic is so far not thinking about leaving and I am pretty sure that if he was to go it wouldn’t change anything. Nevertheless, this team need something special in order to kick-start this season and they need it as soon as possible.

It was Bazdarevic who led Grenoble to promotion from Ligue 2 and the team had a great start to last season after producing some impressive performances in the top flight. They clearly couldn’t continue the great run of results for much longer but still managed to avoid the relegation fight and finished the season in 13th place. Smart recruitment during the summer was definitely one of the reasons for the good season since the boss had brought mostly players with a wealth of Ligue 1 experience and that worked like a charm. He tried to do something similar this summer, having recruited Ljuboja, Dieuze, Matsui and Viviani but that didn’t have the same effect.

If you look at Grenoble’s results this season, you will see they lost most of the games by the narrowest of margins and could have, probably should have taken some points but the reality is they are sitting at rock bottom pointless after 11 league rounds. The situation is obviously alarming at the moment but it seems the team just need a couple of good results to turn this season around. They definitely have the quality to match most of the teams in the league and are now 9 points adrift of safety, but will need to start picking up points very soon. The only problem is that Grenoble face Monaco, Lyon, Lorient and Toulouse in the next four rounds and these are not exactly the teams they would want to be playing at the moment.

The injuries to strikers Ljuboja and Boya only add to the worries, especially since the Serbian striker has been in great form ever since returning to Ligue 1, having scored four out of Grenoble’s five goals this season. Battles, Dieuze, Vitakic, Paillot, Tadic, Ravet and talented Feghouli are all on the sidelines at the moment and survival looks like the mission impossible, at least for the time being.

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