EXCLUSIVE | Jérémie Aliadière: ‘I think this is the season where we have our best chance yet.’ | OneFootball

Get French Football News sat down with former Arsenal, Middlesbrough and FC Lorient striker Jérémie Aliadière to talk about how some of his former teams are faring this season and to look forward to this summer’s World Cup. In this first part, we discussed whether Arsenal will win the Premier League and how well Lorient have done on their return to Ligue 1.

Are Arsenal going to win the Premier League?

Well, I certainly hope so! There are still a fair number of matches to be played and it will be tough to the end. But I hope so – and I think so. When I go to matches and see the quality of play and of the squad, I think this is the season where we have the best chance yet.

There are still both cups and the Champions League, so there are still lots of matches to play and it’s on Mikel Arteta to use the squad well and to play the right players at the right time. Because I think that it is not going to be possible to play the same starting XI every three days, so he is going to need to rotate a lot to try to win.

That’s the problem – when you’re playing on four different fronts, you can’t choose – you can’t say we’re going all-in on the league or all-in on the Champions League. You want to win it all. So you put out the best team for every match. But some players will be more tired than others. So you need to rotate, and it’s not always easy to find the right balance.

It’s all a question of managing the squad. And the last two or three years we’ve come very close to winning the title, and I think that Mikel has learnt a lot from that, and that’s what I’ve noticed this season – until now, Mikel has managed his squad much better, he has rotated a lot more. Sometimes I’ve heard people at the ground who were unhappy to see certain players starting on the bench, but I’ve always said it’s not an XI that will win the title but a squad, and every player has a part to play and something to bring. That’s the most important aspect for me.

Moving on to Lorient, when we spoke to you early in the season, you expected them to be in a relegation battle but they’re actually closer to the European places. How do you explain their successful season?

It’s the magic of football, isn’t it – you think that, coming up from Ligue 2, the squad would struggle to stay up. But instead, they’re having a great season. It’s a team of hard workers and when you have a team that pulls up its sleeves and works hard for each other and that they’re also very well organised, I think the coach has done a great job.

Lorient were always based on a well-organised team with players up front capable of making a difference by scoring goals. But the basics were always about defensive solidity, good organisation, everyone working together, defending as a team, attacking as a team. And when you find good management of the squad and a good balance between attack and defence, then you can create problems even for the big Ligue 1 teams. I remember when I was playing at Lorient – our good seasons were always based on hard work, on players who worked for each other, who helped out their partner. There were no egos, no superstars – we all worked for the club and for the team. And I think that when you find that, you have something – you have power.

And I think that’s what Lorient have found this season. The coach, with his staff, have done a great job recruiting good players and instilling the message that they can do something special together. If any player is too focussed on his own goalscoring record or doing something to help him move to a bigger club, then it won’t work. So I think it’s all about the collective at Lorient, it always has been, and with the coach buying into that it’s working very well. I hope they’ll maintain that until the end of the season and why not maybe sneak a European place – that would be great.

But then of course it’s tough to maintain that season after season, to continue to recruit well and to not lose major players. It’s always about managing the squad from one season to the next.

It’s hard to be a yo-yo club – promotion, relegation, promotion again. It’s the same in England – generally the teams that go up then have to fight to avoid relegation. That’s why it’s impressive that Lorient has had this season, where they are safe from relegation pretty early and can relax and look up the table instead of down.

I also think that, whether you’re in England or France – it’s all very well having great players – I mean look at Tottenham – you look at their squad and at the start of the season you would never have said that they would be in this position [fifth from bottom of the table] with the players they have. But the problem is that once you’re in that position, it’s no longer about talent, about quality. It’s about pulling your sleeves up and getting to work as a team to grind out the results. And I’m not sure that Tottenham or clubs like that are ready to do that. Whereas clubs like Lorient are used to going up and down, so they know what it means to stay up and what is needed to stay up

What part do you think Laurent Koscielny’s return to the club as sporting director has played?

I never played with Laurent, so I don’t know him well, although we’ve met a few times off the pitch. But from everything that I have heard about him, he’s a hard worker, he’s everything that I said earlier – it’s all about the team, the squad, no individualism. So I think having him in the club helps a lot. And in terms of recruiting players, integrating them into the group with that mentality, based on the collective and the main objective of staying up – when you join a club and that’s the objective, the need to fight together and for each other every weekend – I think that Laurent helps to instil that mentality and to find the players capable of integrating into that collective.

Jérémie Aliadière was speaking exclusively to GFFN courtesy of Casino Groups

GFFN | Jeremy Smith