OCTOBER 24, 2009
Stade Municipal Du Ray, Nice
1 PM ET (19:00 CET, 18:00 GMT)
After Tuesday's unbelievable victory at Anfield, we can only hope that the players have come back down to earth- because I'm still on cloud nine- and are ready to dispatch there next league obstacle and maintain their miniscule +1 goal differential lead over second place Montpellier?

Just when you thought the door of the Lyon's transfer season had been locked until December- at least if you believe Puel- with the arrival Bafetimbi Gomis, OL still have some unfinished business to attend to, though it's all "out-bound" traffic, in their minds that is. Really, Puel needs to have his head examined: his minimalist approach to recruiting is really irking the crap-out-of-me.

Incoming:

Aly Cissokho: Should arrive in Lyon either today or tomorrow to take his physical and pen his deal which is said to be worth 15mill with a clause that sees FC Port recieving 20% of his future sale! JMA has found a new nemisis in Porto president Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa.

Lyon Can Finally Fly Straight Again: OL's New Winger Swoops into Town, Hopefully to Take Us to New Heights.
No, it's not a Ferrari nor Beluga caviar, it's a Brazilian winger. Like and injured bird, OL's left wing- along with a slew of other issues- hindered it's abilitiy to fly as strong as it was capable of, but now it's finally healed, stronger than ever, and ready for lift-off.

OL Gets Serious About The Attack!

In:

Lisandro Lopez: Lyon finally got their man. JMA's first signing of the summer cost OL 24 mill plus performance bonuses. Lisandro is supposed to be in Lyon Friday for his physical.

Hotting up.

IN:

Lisandro Lopez: JMA himself was supposed to be in Portugal today to personaly finalize the deal for Lisandro, but management dropped a bomb today on Porto! In L'Equipe, Bernard Lacombe announced that management had called-off the trip to Portugal today, as well as divulging that negotiations for Toulouse striker Andre Pierre Gignac were underway(see more below).

The transfer rumors seemed to be slowing down, after a few frantic weeks of wild speculation, most of it, pretty outrageous but in the last two days have come-back fullforce. Next week might see OL land their first Summer acquisition and "bigfish" of the mercato, let's keep our fingers crossed.

Three Possible New-Comers to Gerland This Season.

I'm planning to do one of these at the end of every week to sum-up the concrete, as well as all the crap rumors out there concerning Lyon. So here we go:

Possible Ins:

Lisandro Lopez: Negotiations for the Argentine International are still on-going, much to most of our relief, after the Aly Cissokho debacle.

Which one/s will be in an OL kit next year?

Well, the summer transfer season is underway, and if rumors are to be believed, Lyon is pretty busy. I don't give much weight to most of the zillion rumors floating around- one of you guys made a comment about not believing an OL transfer rumor untill the player was wearing a Lyon kit, and shaking hands with JMA at a press conference; I'm starting to feel that way.

Readers of this blog will know how much I detest Arsene Wenger and his policy of stealing the youth players of other clubs. I know other clubs do it too (Chelsea is another notable example), but Arsenal do it every other day. In fact, I protested this post that praised Arsenal's youth system chiefly because Arsenal's youth system is really just Arsene systematically purchasing well known young prospects from other clubs.

It's international week, so things are rather quiet on the Lyon front. Here's what's been going on:

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Fabio Grosso is back in training and is expected to play against Lille on October 18th. This is good news because if he does well, he play against Steaua a few days later.

These 3-0 losses are starting to turn into a yearly ritual. A humiliating one.

The game was so bad that Lyon's official website posted a highlight video that was only three minutes long - usually they are around twenty minutes. Watching it, I realized why. Apart from Mickael Pagis's three goals, not much else happened.

Lyon had their first summer friendly this afternoon against Nimes in Albertville. Goals were scored by Juninho (10), Yannis Tafer (40), and Anthony Mounier (63). This was Claude Puel's first match in charge, and for many of the players, their first match in an OL jersey.

The latest news from this week...Due to the amount of material covered, I didn't post links to the original sources like I normally do, but if you want them, let me know.

OUTGOING:

FRED: Is it just me, or does Fred spend an inordinate amount of time making life difficult for the rest of us?

Last week, Lyon Foot published a hot collection of Lyon players with tattoos. It's a different sort of look at OL players, whose reputations normally come across as nice family guys. Which they still are, but sometimes we like to pretend they can be badass.

For me, the biggest surprise was Anthony Mounier.