Lyon form worries Fernandez

Auxerre coach Jean Fernandez has warned his charges to expect a challenging encounter when they travel to Lyon on Wednesday.

Fernandez’s side will look to break a five-match winless run and enter the mid-season break on a high at the Stade de Gerland against a Lyon side which is fourth in Ligue 1 with 30 points.

Auxerre have slumped to 13th on the table with 22 points, a far cry from last season’s third place finish, and the manager believes Lyon will be hard to topple at home.

“It will be a challenging game. Lyon are on a series of eleven games unbeaten, they played a good game against Marseille at the Velodrome and the stars of the team are back in business,” Fernandez said.

“They have had many players injured. Now, they have a strong team, balanced, and for us, it will be very difficult.”

“We are not in the same category as Lyon. Lyon plays in the Champions League every year, for us, it was the first time in the last 10 seasons.”

“We used a lot of energy in that competition against AC Milan, Ajax and Real (Madrid) and a lot of players have been injured.”

“Half of the team is out: (Cedric) Hengbart, (Benoit) Pedretti, (Delvin) Ndinga, (Ireneusz) Jelen, (Anthony) Le Tallec.”

“Lyon managed the competition better than us and mainly, they are stronger than us, and on what I see of their last games, they’ll play the title as we play the maintenance.”

“For us, the focus is on us as a team. Let’s see how we recovered after the last game in Montpellier.”

“The team is physically very tired. There is one game to play before the holidays and we’ll have to concentrate because it’s always a dangerous match before the Christmas parties.”

“If we don’t deal with those situations well, we could be in trouble but Lyon will go into the match as favourites.”