{"id":21890,"date":"2018-03-14T18:30:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T18:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thehighertempopress.com\/?p=21890"},"modified":"2018-03-13T22:46:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T22:46:09","slug":"vive-la-revolution-part-xvii-je-suis-un-echec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thehighertempopress.com\/2018\/03\/vive-la-revolution-part-xvii-je-suis-un-echec\/","title":{"rendered":"Vive la R\u00e9volution Part XVII: Je suis un \u00e9chec"},"content":{"rendered":"
“Oui, je\u00a0suis\u00a0un\u00a0\u00e9chec” I found myself saying to the microphone in my last press conference at AS Cannes. And it was true. I had failed, therefore I am a failure. When I rocked up on the French Riviera I was young, full of hope. I promised Ligue 1 football, that was a given. After a while, I believed I could do it with a team of amateur players. Did my ego take over? I am not sure. But the simple fact is this: Being relegated and turning professional days after relegation was confirmed was the end of my time in France. It just took another three months for me to realise”.<\/em><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n You’d have thought it would have been easier once we turned pro, right? That’s what all the so-called FM experts were telling me. Well, they were wrong. Turning pro was a nightmare for us at Cannes.<\/p>\n The problems started when not one of the current squad of amateurs wanted to sign a professional contract with us. They were still down from being relegated but I could not afford to wait. So, with a very heavy heart, I had to release the entire squad and the work of rebuilding began.<\/p>\n This brought on the next set of problems. Recruitment. The players I wanted either did not want to join us or thought we had way more money to spend on wages than we actually we prepared to offer. Yes, I was being quite tight as I was working on the\u00a0real wage budget\u00a0<\/a><\/em>I had worked out but some of the requests we were getting were crazy. I didn’t want to pay a player much above \u20ac1500 a week tops, yet players were expecting \u20ac4k plus almost everytime. As a result, we ended up with a load of players earning anything between \u20ac400 and \u20ac1500 a week and I could just sense we were not good enough. Compared to the previous amateur team I’d had in the third tier, well it would have been like sending out a Sunday league side to play Manchester City.<\/p>\n And that is what happened. We struggled through pre-season and morale was already low amongst the new squad. We got hammered in the Coupe de Ligue preliminary round by a Ligue 2 side. We used to win games like that. And then the league started.<\/p>\n Three wins and two draws in the first twelve games had us mid-table and not that far off a promotion playoff spot, but. A big but. I knew the truth. The magic had gone. The fans, who had been spoiled on the way up, could sense we were on the way down. The board were starting to lose faith. More importantly, I was starting to lose faith.<\/p>\n