One small step for man, one giant leap for St.Etienne

St. Etienne claimed their first victory of the season last night, if quite fortuitously, with an impressive 3-1 home win over Ajax at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, and manager Ted Powell, as well as the whole squad, are brimming with confidence after a steady start to the season, which has shown that, hopefully, they’ll be more than capable of pulling their weight and competing in Division Two, rather than make up the numbers.

Things got off to an incredible start, with Andre-Pierre Gignac firing the hosts in front in the 1st minute, but from then on, Ajax’s quality really came to the fore, with the likes of Stindl, Radu and Wernbloom coming close. Eventually, Inaki Williams rifled home a deserved equaliser after 24 minutes, and at this point, having dropped points from a winning position vs Sampdoria on Thursday, the home fans must have been fearing the worst. 

However, their despair was to be short lived, when just two minutes later, the front two combined beautifully yet again, with Haraguchi playing in Gignac, and the Frenchman restoring the hosts lead to smash home his 3rd goal of the season. Just eleven minutes later, the roles were reversed, with Gignac playing in Japanese new signing Haraguchi, and the former Monchengladbach man slotted home to give the hosts some breathing space, whilst providing the catalyst for sheer jubilation and disbelief amongst the home crowd. 

The second half was a bit of a backs to the wall job. When looking at the stats, it looked like Ajax dominated the game. They had 16 shots, 11 on target, while ASSE had 9 shots, with 3 hitting the target, and all hitting the back of the net. However, when you look at the game itself, it was actually far from a dominant performance. Each side had 7 pieces of attacking commentary each, with 5 of Ajax’s coming before the half hour mark. So while stats may make it look like we were lucky, we feel it was a good defensive performance, and more to the point, we were absolutely lethal with our finishing. This is what Powell had to say after the match-

‘ I’m absolutely delighted. It’s a fantastic result for us. Before the match, when you looked at the two teams there was a big difference in quality. Ajax had the likes of Sokratis in defence, Strootman in midfield, and Williams, Bernadeschi and Fekir going forward. They’re all players we could only dream of having at ASSE. However, we showed tremendous fight, grit and determination to get the win. We’ve got four points so far, and we’re showing signs of improvement game on game at the moment. We’ve shown brilliant determination in every match so far and the team’s only getting stronger and stronger. While it’s still early days, it’s vital to get off to a good start to the season. If we’d lost today, with an away game up next, you don’t want to be heading to Sunderland with only 1 point in 3 matches. If we had that, and then failed to win at the Stadium of Light, that leaves you on 1 or 2 points, 4 games in, and that’d be regarded as a poor start. Confidence would get lower and lower and we’d be really struggling. But we’ve managed to prevent that today and I’m over the moon. Some may say we didn’t deserve to win today but truth is, we couldn’t care less. There’ll be games this season where we play much better than today and still lose. That’s how football works. We created as many, if not more, clear cut chances than Ajax. Nobody scored in the 2nd half, yet we came closest when Amrabat struck the woodwork. Our front two of Gignac and Haraguchi are working wonders right now, and 100% of our goals so far this season have been scored by them. They did well in pre-season and have carried that form on, and long may it continue. ‘

Les Verts visit struggling Sunderland on Thursday, but before that, open their campaign for the World Club Shield with a visit to Division 5 Club Brugge. Partizan and Crystal Palace make up the group, and ASSE are feeling confident of progression, but keen to get off to a good start in Belgium. There’s no doubt St. Etienne are one of the favourites to go down this season, and we are heading into almost every game at the moment with much lower-rated starting XI’s. However, it’s been a very promising start to the season, and Les Verts really are showing that, so far at least, that they’re capable of showing why David beat Goliath in the end.