Jean-Louis Gasset: "Very high ambitions"

Since this Thursday, Rémy Cabella has been a part of your team. How have you welcomed this good news?

We had to wait a bit but it’s the middle of August, which suits me just fine! We wanted to continue to work with Rémy because he was decisive and came into his own during the second half of the season. He’s a boy with temperament, we know him well. He has a different profile than Wahbi Khazri’s. Rémy will go and look for the ball while Wahbi makes his move 16 metres from the net. We have to find a balance so that they work well together. We have certain scenarios planned for that.

Do you consider as of today that ASSE’s transfer window has closed?

We’re not far from our destination. Tomorrow, I’m going to bring 14 professional players and a few young ones to Strasbourg. With our choice to have a small team, we’re hoping to be spared from any injuries or suspensions so that we don’t have to rush things with the young players. Certain players are coming directly from the France national under-17 footballl team and thus need some time in order to adapt. In any case, I am satisfied with the work done with David Wantier for the recruitment of new players. He’s a very competent person who has a good international system at his disposal. He has always been a great help in finding solutions on all issues. Since I came to this club, he has made all my ideas possible.

Have you set any goals for your team?

We are AS Saint-Etienne, a club with very high ambitions. Last year, we managed to fight for a qualification for the UEFA Europa League while being at the bottom of the table in January. This year, that’s going to be hard to achieve because our adversaries are going to highly-motivated to vanquish us due to our recruits. In order to get to where we want to be, we’ll have to have as much motivation as them and play better than during our second half against Guingamp during which even our main players lacked lucidity and physical freshness.

“We worked the physical aspect of our game this week”

To what do you attribute this decline in your regime?

There are many reasons to this, we played an excellent first half but, during the second, we played very bad for 30 minutes. We didn’t have the resources to respond to our adversary until we scored our second goal with a first-class offensive. This can be explained by the difficulties we had to give game time to our experienced players during the last friendly match. Against Nice, at half-time, we had already lost three or four of our defenders so, in order to avoid further snags, we spared other players who as a result didn’t have their usual rhythm for the first day. But we worked the physical aspect of our game this week so that they got back to 100%.

What did you think about Strasbourg’s victory, your next adversary?

Even if the victory was eased by the expulsion of Bordeaux’s fans, Strasbourg played a good match. I have to say that the club has recruited in a very intelligent manner: a good goalie, a good centre-back (Mitrovic) that we know well by having approached him before his operation and Sissoko, a young player framed by experienced players like Martin or Liénard. All that makes a team that plays well.

How did you react to the words of Thierry Laurey, the Strasbourg coach, who says that you’re his mentor?

I’ve known Thierry Laurey as a player and he was my second-in-command when I began my coaching career. He was so meticulous in his preparation for matches that we called him “the mastermind”. He’d like his players to be as intelligent as him and that’s maybe the area in which he has to progress but I knew that he would be a good coach. Today, that’s certainly the case. He does good work and has many ideas.