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St-Etienne Slip Further Behind

The end of November saw St-Etienne slip further behind in the championship race, together with their first double defeat this season.

First up was the top-of-the-table clash with Ajaccio, which the team lost at home by 1-2.  They were not helped by two red cards in the first half, for bad tackles.  The remaining players tired visibly in the latter stages, which is when Ajaccio struck twice to win the crucial battle.

Further frustration followed, with a defeat to Guingamp at the Stade de Roudourou, in a limp display from which only the goalscorer, Charlie McNeill, came out with any credit.

Irvin Cardona returned from injury for the home match against Annecy, and he hit a hat-trick to announce that he was fully fit.  We wait to see what his future holds, as the January window approaches.

Cardona collects the match ball

As a result, St-Etienne are now four points behind Ajaccio albeit with a match in hand.  More pointedly, the chasing pack have closed the gap and now Les Verts find themselves looking over their shoulder.

Ibrahim Sissoko continues to struggle in front of goal, having failed to find the net for two months, now.  Accordingly, his leadership of the Golden Boot race has now disappeared and he now finds himself joint second, still on 10 goals for the season.

Mbuku: I Want to Stay

Nathanael Mbuku has told the Press that he would prefer to stay at St-Etienne, rather than go back to the reserves at Augsburg in January.

Mbuku after scoring in October

The 22-year-old striker has featured in 10 of the 16 matches for St-Etienne this season, some of them from the bench, and he is “quite pleased” at the game time he is getting.

“I know that, back at Augsburg, I will be in the reserves, so I don’t really understand why they want to recall me.

“At the end of the day, they are the club I’m contracted to, so I’ll have to go along with their demands, but fans here should know that I would like to see out my loan.  It’s looking like an exciting season for us and I’d like to be part of that.”

We shall have to wait and see, but it’s currently not looking good, according to sources in Germany.

Whoa, two red cards in one game. These two certainly sold you out, starting a two game loss streak. Still in a pretty good position though.

Regrettably, my XBox has decided it cannot now find the file for this career.  

It was perfectly fine when I signed out a couple of days ago, but now it simply isn't available.  I have no means to recover it, although I am still trying.   I don't know if this is a fault in EAFC24, or some kind of hiccup in the XBox/the file saving process in 'the cloud', but I have yet to find any information that lets me know how I can try and find it.  The XBox is remarkably bad at letting you see saved game files (as opposed to the game software).

It's a pity, because it was starting to develop into a fine career.  I just lost a thriller 4-3 against PSG in Round 32 of the cup, which was therefore going to develop into a nail-biting chase to see whether I made it to the end of the season without getting fired - in the space of just one month, my approval rating plummeted from 94 to 70!  I was planning on reporting on this as a crisis of confidence arising from the departure of the 3 players sold and the three loanees leaving, coupled with player unrest about contracts, but I obviously can't do that now.

I might start a new ASSE career, but at the moment this has annoyed me enough to wait for a bit.

Awful news. The amount of time and consideration that one puts into a save - only for the game/the console to destroy the effort with a blink of an eye. Sorry to hear that mate.