Marked for Anthony Bermont
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market30 Aug 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Olympique Akbou waiting with a shirt. Nobody at RC Lens is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market30 Aug 2027
The name of Maximiliano Araújo has come up in conversations RC Lens were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.14 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Samson Baidoo is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Market30 Aug 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Robin Risser was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match28 Aug 2027
RC Lens leaking at the back
5 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad30 Aug 2027
At 27 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Match28 Aug 2027
Three points for RC Lens, 3‑2 the final word against OGC Nice in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Transfer targets23 Aug 2027
$140.0M on the table at Brentford. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad23 Aug 2027
A one-man rearguard from Robin Risser
There were 9 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Market23 Aug 2027
Only the photograph left for Ruben Aguilar
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ruben Aguilar will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around RC Lens the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The dugout23 Aug 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” RC Lens may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad23 Aug 2027
The step up is real for Beraldo
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Market23 Aug 2027
Paradou come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and RC Lens did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Match21 Aug 2027
The wait goes on for RC Lens
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Words exchanged at RC Lens
Robin Risser and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad23 Aug 2027
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and RC Lens know it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad31 May 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Angers SCO this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 May 2027
Haris Belkebla falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The dugout31 May 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Bruno Pirri, and the manager let it.
Market31 May 2027
Marius Savidan returns from a loan that gave him nothing
1 appearances and 0 goals is not a season, it is a year somebody has lost. Whether that is his fault, the borrowing club's or the people who arranged it is the argument the next few weeks will have.
The dugout31 May 2027
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Harouna Djibirin trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Squad31 May 2027
“I did not sign to watch. Nobody does.” The oldest complaint in the game, and Angers SCO will have to answer it with minutes or with a move.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match3 Oct 2026
0‑3 to Paris FC, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Match3 Oct 2026
The wait goes on for Angers SCO
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Anthony Lopes and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad5 Oct 2026
A row about effort at Angers SCO
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Haris Belkebla was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Loan watch5 Oct 2026
“I did not go to AC Ajaccio to sit and watch. I want to come back to Angers SCO and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 8 matches say the rest.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 18. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Lilian Raolisoa ran the middle of the pitch — 6.83
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 10 combined actions and a mark of 6.83, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Squad5 Oct 2026
27 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Nobody left the Angers SCO dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.