Niche Cache
Old's gaffer at St Etienne facing the chop apparently.
There’s a good chance we may be nearing the end of the Ben Old at Left-Back experiment. Not because he’s been dropped nor because the previous incumbent has returned. The previous incumbent, Ebenezer Annan, actually returned two games ago and has been stuck on the bench watching Oldy do an increasingly assured job there. The coach has already explained his reasoning there...
Old's gaffer at St Etienne facing the chop apparently.
There’s a good chance we may be nearing the end of the Ben Old at Left-Back experiment. Not because he’s been dropped nor because the previous incumbent has returned. The previous incumbent, Ebenezer Annan, actually returned two games ago and has been stuck on the bench watching Oldy do an increasingly assured job there. The coach has already explained his reasoning there...
Eirik Horneland: “Annan is available for the group. Since his return, he has trained for several weeks, he has also sometimes been rested. On Tuesday, for example, he missed training for administrative reasons, but he has been training normally since. Ebenezer is in good shape but since then Ben Old has settled on the left side. There is competition on this left side, it is an advantage to be able to choose between these two players.”
Nah, the problem is that ASSE lost 1-0 to Reims this week, conceding after their opponents had been reduced to ten men, thereby dropping down to fifth on the ladder and with that coach Eirik Horneland’s job security is barely hanging by a thread.
The Norwegian coach was hired last December (while Old was out with his knee injury) and wasn’t able to prevent them from relegation. They stuck with him largely because they were expected to bounce straight back up again – they have a reputation among their rivals as the Paris Saint-Germain of Ligue 2 – but after a sharp start they’ve stuttered badly and now promotion doesn’t seem like such a given. His tactical inflexibility, his high demands on players, and his loss of dressing room trust have all been cited as further issues.
And this is the bloke who masterminded, and then wholeheartedly embraced, Ben Old’s positional switch. Without him the equation would change. Then again, a new coach might go back to picking Ben Old as a winger whereas this one doesn’t - in that case, sure, bring on the changing of the guards. Never really know with these things. Horneland will have at least one more game to try and save his job... but it’s been reported that they almost replaced him during the winter break, having come to an agreement with a current unnamed MLS coach who later withdrew his application. So they were actively trying to replace him before they lost to ten-man Reims. Good luck, mate, you’re going to need it.
It has been cool to see Old settle into a different role, getting a little more comfortable with every subsequent match at LB. But we also can’t ignore that ASSE have only won one of the five games that he’s played there. Against Reims, Old had a shot blocked inside the six yard box while it was still scoreless and was nutmegged prior to the cross that led to the goal. On the whole he was pretty good... but those two moments won’t reflect well upon him in light of the outcome.
It has been cool to see Old settle into a different role, getting a little more comfortable with every subsequent match at LB. But we also can’t ignore that ASSE have only won one of the five games that he’s played there. Against Reims, Old had a shot blocked inside the six yard box while it was still scoreless and was nutmegged prior to the cross that led to the goal. On the whole he was pretty good... but those two moments won’t reflect well upon him in light of the outcome.