Team Focus: Bordeaux’s European Ambitions Undone by Lack of Punch

“You didn’t understand it? Me neither.” The final act of Bordeaux’s deflating home draw with Reims visibly infuriated their coach Willy Sagnol, both on the touchline and afterwards in his press conference, as substitute Grégory Sertic ploughed a direct free-kick into the visiting wall seconds before the final whistle – a free-kick that his teammate Wahbi Khazri was supposed to take. “I don’t think that, at the top level, these are things that we can accept,” chided Sagnol.

After a Ligue 1 weekend in which the top three took just a point between them, it may seem like the championship that nobody wants to win, but the lack of decisiveness has spread below the summit. A win at the Chaban-Delmas would have put Les Girondins in 4th place and just 6 points behind Marseille in the final Champions League spot. Instead, they finished the weekend in 7th.

On the surface, they look solid. Bordeaux are unbeaten in 6, but 4 of those have been draws. They have scored only 5 goals in their last 6 matches, and have scored more than once in a game in only one of their last 13 fixtures in all competitions, winning just 3 of those 13. Midfielder André Poko spoke for the dressing room as a whole when he called the evening – and, by implication, the current run – “frustrating”. Striker Isaac Kiese Thelin, who scored his first goal for the club against Reims after arriving in the winter, told beIN Sports that he was “angry” his team had let it slip.

Sagnol’s men had the chances. They had 67% of the possession and twice as many shots as their visitors (14 to 7), with little avail. It is becoming a recurrent theme. At Rennes last week, Bordeaux had 65% possession, and 21 shots to the home side’s 9, yet required a highly debatable penalty, converted by Khazri in the closing stages of the match, to salvage a draw from the Stade de la Route de Lorient.

Clearly missing your top scorer doesn’t help, and the loss of Cheikh Diabaté seems to make Bordeaux’s difficulties in front of goal a fairly open and shut case. The towering Malian had 8 goals in 13 starts before having an operation for another knee problem in January, which will keep him out for most of the remainder of the season. At the point of his operation, he had missed just 4 games during the season – none of which Bordeaux had won.

When we go back to the last time Bordeaux scored more than twice, against Lorient at the start of December, it was Diabaté who was decisive, scoring twice in two minutes after coming on a substitute to turn around another match that they looked like throwing away. It is hardly fair to blame Thelin, a 22-year-old just getting to grips with life in France.

Diego Rolán, almost a year his junior but now in his second Ligue 1 season, can probably sympathise. He has only really begun to settle this season, scoring 7 goals in 17 starts. His contribution has dried up too, though, as he has repeatedly run into disciplinary problems, the most recent of which led Sagnol to send him to train with the club’s reserves immediately (and then on an early holiday) before the winter break. Rolán has just 2 goals and an assist in 13 appearances since the beginning of November.

The service for the front players, however, has left a lot to be desired. Sagnol’s team are already very reliant on Khazri, who only arrived from Bastia last summer, and looks to be one of the bargains of the season at €2m. Having scored 7 and made 4 more this season, Khazri has delivered either a goal or an assist in each of his four matches since returning from the Africa Cup of Nations, where he was a quarter-finalist with Tunisia.

Little wonder that Sagnol was so annoyed that Sertic bumped Khazri from that fateful free-kick on Saturday. The 25-year-old midfielder clearly wanted to seize the moment, with the vice-captain having spent the last four games out of the starting XI. “My role isn’t to make so-and-so or so-and-so enjoy themselves,” Sagnol argued after the game, “but to make them play best together.” The coach went on to say there was “no problem” with Sertic.

The numbers would suggest otherwise. Last season Sertic – always adept from set-pieces – delivered 10 assists. Only James Rodríguez and Zlatan Ibrahimovic provided more (11, in both cases). It’s not just the front players’ profligacy that has affected this figure, however. Sertic, perhaps unsettled when a possible winter move to Sevilla fell through, has come up with just 0.7 key passes per match this term, as compared to 1.7 per match last season. His average rating has dropped off from last season’s 7.27 to 6.80 in this campaign.

Sagnol has had a strange season, showing signs of returning the 2009 champions to the status of one of Ligue 1’s touchstones, which they haven’t been for a while, yet finding his clumsy comments on African players miring him in controversy. The players – led by Diabaté – who supported him in the aftermath of that storm seem to be right behind him, yet the problems with Rolán and Sertic suggest all is not quite right.

It is imperative that Sagnol moves to seal up these fissures, and quickly. This most unpredictable of seasons still has the potential to be one of success for Bordeaux if they can grab the opportunities offered to them.

Do you think Bordeaux can climb the table and threaten the Champions League places? Let us know in the comments below