Marked for Édouard Gautier
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad8 Mar 2027
Édouard Gautier damages knee ligaments — 24 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 24 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market8 Mar 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chamois Niortais can pretend not to have heard.
Squad8 Mar 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Chamois Niortais may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad8 Mar 2027
A muscle injury sidelines Marcel Fontaine for 14 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Chamois Niortais will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Marc Caron in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chamois Niortais this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom8 Mar 2027
The board have put money on the table rather than an encouraging word. What happens to it now is somebody else's problem, and somebody else's job.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad1 Mar 2027
Édouard Gautier damages knee ligaments — 31 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 31 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Marc Caron 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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Marcel Fontaine has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Chamois Niortais will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad22 Feb 2027
Édouard Gautier damages knee ligaments — 40 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 40 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Yann Fournier: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Chamois Niortais have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Marc Caron in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chamois Niortais this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Michel Brunet 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.
Loan watch22 Feb 2027
“I did not go to Stade Lavallois to sit and watch. I want to come back to Chamois Niortais and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 28 matches say the rest.
Loan watch22 Feb 2027
The goals keep arriving from Bruno Roger’s exile
8 goals in 24 games at Vicenza — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Chamois Niortais updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.