Pau, Rodez or Concarneau. These are the cities that Olympique Lyonnais will discover next season, in Ligue 2, if they continue at this pace. Sunday, the Rhone club suffered a new disappointment in Lille (0-2) at the end of the 13th day of L1. The only team in the championship with a single victory, OL are dead last, four points behind 16th and play-off Lorient (who have a match in hand). Beyond the balance sheet, it is the visual impression and the atmosphere around Lyon which makes its most loyal supporters anxious, aware that there is no longer a captain on board the ship.

Against LOSC, Fabio Grosso tried everything. Maybe too much, in fact. OL started with a four-man defense, before switching to five at the back, then back to four at the end of the match. No device allowed his flock to master their subject against the 4th in L1. Over the last four matches, Grosso has made seven changes at halftime. In seven matches on the bench, he has never lined up the same starting lineup. “I never feel lost,” he swore at Amazon Prime Video. “We completely trust the coach who knows what he is doing and what he wants. We have to try to follow him,” defended Skelly Alvero as best he could on Sunday evening.

The 21-year-old midfielder, recruited last summer at Sochaux, pointed out a “lack of realism” and a “spiral that needs to be broken as quickly as possible”. At a press conference, Grosso insisted on the lack of “confidence”, referring to a “very young environment which cannot, in the face of difficulty, make good readings”. The Italian is not wrong: OL is the L1 team with the largest gap between its number of goals (8) and its number of “expected goals” (15.5), a statistic which measures the number of goals that “should” have been scored based on the quality of the chances.

But Grosso was also expected to restore confidence in the Lyon group. “The atmosphere in the locker room? It remains in the locker room but it is still complicated,” Alvero did not hide. Lyon’s only victory of the season, in Rennes two weeks ago (0-1), came against a team in crisis, which parted ways with its coach Bruno Genesio in the process, and which played ten against eleven for 85 minutes out of 90. The solidarity born from the rocking of the bus in Marseille, which seemed to have united the bonds between Grosso and his players, did not translate onto the pitch. “Today we’re diving back a little while hoping that it’s not… the end,” fears Alvero, referring to the possible relegation of a seven-time French champion club. And the levers to bounce back are now rare.

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As disoriented as Grosso looks, it’s difficult for OL to sack him. Who to put in his place? What duty firefighter would take the risk? Like what Bordeaux and Saint-Étienne experienced, relegated a year and a half ago, OL have their backs against the wall. Its workforce, the result of a disastrous summer transfer window, paralyzed by poor financial management, offers little margin. Former French internationals trained at the club, Corentin Tolisso and Alexandre Lacazette were expected to bring a renewed sense of identity and experience. According to Le Progrès, they could be sold as early as January. The owner, John Textor, has promised recruits this winter to create a new dynamic.

“As you know, in January we will have no governance limits on our ability to strengthen the team. Rest assured that I will never allow this club to lose its prestige,” the American businessman announced on October 1. It remains to be seen who are the players in distress in their careers to be ready to accept the challenge of a commando mission in Lyon, who can still dig deeper between now and then. OL travel to Lens, undefeated for 12 matches, next Saturday, before finally facing Marseille at the Vélodrome (December 6), and must also travel to Monaco, 3rd in L1, on December 15. The ordeal may only be beginning.