The race for second place - Ligue 1 & French football 2012-2013

Because let's be honest, it's a given that PSG will finish first. If they don't it'll truly be hilarious and heads will roll but they've probably spent more on transfers this summer than all 19 other ligue 1 teams combined.

Anyways, the first matches were played this weekend and I didn't see anything. Which won't stop me from saying stuff about this season. Two clubs from Corsica in the top flight ! This means lots of ugly and violent football matches as that is what happens when you play in Corsica and the players try to intimidate the opposing team (at least that's what their reputation is... and look do I spy Ajaccio with one point even though they won their match this weekend ? Why yes, because they started the season with -2 points for violence towards an assistant referee). Apart from that we have Reims finding their way to ligue 1 for the first time since, well, since a long time. They probably won't be as successful as they were during the 50's but must be good to be back in the top league for the first time 33 years (if wiki is to be trusted). The third team to make it to ligue 1 with bastia and reims is troyes, who were already there a few years ago. i expect loads of lame puns on troyes/trois in french newspapers.

Apart from psg buying up all of serie a, the only other big transfer has to be marvin martin going to lille from sochaux. marseille and lyon have no money and are looking to sell off players before they can actually look for new blood. montpellier have sold giroud to arsenal and seem to have managed to keep their other players (much to my surprise i'll admit). they are going for a new giroud by hiring another forward from a ligue 2 team (charbonnier from angers) but rumour has it he's probably not going to make it as well as giroud did - thank you football pundits for such incredible insight. bordeaux and st etienne will be looking to do as well or better than last season, rennes will show good things early on and then falter and tumble down the table to their usual 5-6th spot, nice will definitely be in the battle for relegation as that is where they seem to enjoy being, evian thonon gaillard will continue being a club whose name includes three french cities located in the alps that play in a fourth city from haute savoie (annecy), toulouse will continue playing boring football in a stadium half empty because honestly who cares about a middling football team when you live in a city with a great rugby team and i'm now out of things to say about the other clubs i haven't mentioned (sorry brest, nancy, valenciennes, lorient and sochaux).

I think Lille will be top 2 this season. Okay 2nd.

Seems like a rather safe bet. They've had a good transfer period, getting Marvin Martin, Steeve Elana from Brest as backup keeper and Salomon Kalou from Chelsea (how did I forget about that). Lille is basically repeating what lyon did in the 00's by selling players high and buying good prospects etc. of course they're doing this thanks to lyon buying some of their players for completely crazy prices...

ESPN has started to show an hour highlights show of the previous weeks Ligue 1 action so there's a fair chance I'll get sucked into this.

Nice to see Gourcuff score the winner at the weekend. Lille looked good. V many red cards tho.

Lille-Nancy on right now. Lille in their fancy new stadium, Nancy parking the bus. My first time seeing Marvin Martin. A lackluster first 20 mins tbh.

Kalou just missed the target on a one-on-one

wtf they're stopping for a drinks break. Is this cricket?

Is the new ground nice? I always think there's something odd about French stadia, but I'm not sure what it is - just a feeling that they're not as other countries' somehow, that they're not really meant for football. St Etienne's is the exception.

Nancy take the lead against the run of play. The 35 away supporters erupt. Lovely strike curled into the bottom corner from 20 yards.

Stadium v nice, v square tho' and the corners don't look properly filled in

I think it has a retractable roof also half the pitch can raise higher than the other half for when they host pop concerts. They should try a game doing that.

Terrific header by Kalou. 1-1. Cue Song 2. Why why why music when a goal is scored.

red card for nancy which makes 3 ligue 1 games i've seen this season and 5 red cards!

Marvin Martin subbed off. He's been meh. Dimitri Payet has looked v good tho'.

That would be incredible xp. A particularly dogged away side should be allowed to deploy that option if they can hold out at 0-0 until the 85th minute, and turn the last few minutes into an actual siege.

Bastos got a stunning goal vs Troyes yesterday.

http://youtu.be/Y5ghNpu_QBY

i was looking for that on youtube yesterday and found a 11/12 compilation video featuring bastos and neymar

never really thought of bastos as that kind of highlights reel player....but he is very good, direct goalscoring wing-forward

lyon seem to have about 1/10th of the profile they had a few years ago but a quick browse through the squads suggest they probably have the second best in france

0-0 draw for psg at ajaccio. oh dear.

why is nobody better than newcastle trying to get debuchy? i thought there was no way they would get a chance to sign him earlier in the summer, yet ashley is still trying to get him for nothing

pandemic: the stoppage for drinks is because the matches are played in the middle of the afternoon and there's a heatwave in france right now, so it makes some sense though it must look strange. it's enforced by the league apparently.

nakhchivan: bastos usually scores a couple of nice goals every season but he's a very annoying player. def the type of player who chooses which games he'll show up for, he looks like he can't be bothered to make an effort most of the time. also a specialist at kicking freekicks really hard straight into the defenders or very high above the goal. he definitely has talent and every season he'll have a month or two where he does well and then he just disappears. also i'd say lyon has the third best team (on paper) after psg and lille, but they're basically trying to sell off half their team (reveillere almost went to psg when they got bisevac, lloris has been offered just about everywhere, latest rumour is sending grenier+pied to nice for monzon which would be a really shitty trade). also, gourcuff was injured yet again, during the 10th minute of his game this weekend, guy really has had no luck since coming to lyon.

yes i saw it was 35c in lille

not quite so warm in england but some of the managers, more than the players, looked rougher than usual this weekend

clement grenier was once described as the new kaká

Are Lyon in financial trouble, Jibe? I remember they were talking about a new 60,000 stadium too.

yeah lyon are not doing very well financially. they spent quite a lot of money a couple years ago with few results to show from it and they're also out of the champions league for the first time in 13 years (and the millions that come with it). also they're going the arsenal way, trying to not spend money and build a team from their youth academy while the stadium is being built. problem being that while they were one of the first french clubs to talk about getting a new stadium, they're also the one team that's not seeing any progress on that front. and they gave hge contracts a few years ago to older players like cris whom they're trying to get rid of (but who's gonna want to buy a 34 yr old injury prone defender whose nothing but a shadow of his former self ever sicne a big injury ?). at the beginning of the summer aulas targeted a few players who were paid high salaries and did not seem to work their asses off on the field (cris, kallstrom bastos and cissokho) and said they were the players we'd try to sell. only kallstrom has been sold to some russian club, bastos is in contact with a qatari club but nothing's happening and cissokho and cris have no one who's shown interest.

clément grenier is a good enough player who has flashes of brilliance . he's still quite young too, as he's 21, so he should stay in lyon. i'd love to see a 3G midfield of gonalons gourcuff grenier for example but it seems that between gourcuff and grenier there's always at least one injured... but yeah, the new kaka sounds quite excessive.

how is the new highest income tax rate effecting things

are psg paying zlatan via some offshore scheme or are there really paying him 40m a year before tax?

there/they

PARIS, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Olympique Lyon playmaker Yoann Gourcuff will be sidelined for up to three months after injuring his left knee during the Ligue 1 game against Troyes at the weekend, the club said on Monday.
The 26-year-old, who has been battling with injuries since he joined Lyon in 2010, tore the internal lateral ligament of his knee after six minutes when he collided with Troyes midfielder Benjamin Nivet on Saturday.
"He will be out for six weeks to three months, depending on how he recovers from his injury," Lyon said in a statement.

nakh, i'm guessing you'r talking about the 75% tax rate applied on all earnings beyond 1M€ but it's still just talk rn. but from what newspapers said zlatan has worked stuff into his contract if that law does come to pass and yes, psg will be paying cray sums of money to leave him with a 12M€ nett salary.

Hollande campaigned on a promise to tax all earnings over one million Euros (about $1.25 million) at a rate of 75 percent. If Hollande goes through with this, P.S.G. and other French clubs would have to pay players considerably more than any other club in Europe to get them to come to France. While Ibrahimovic’s net salary is reported to be about $17 million, it is rumored that the gross salary is somewhere near $44 million, with the French government getting a generous cut. Estimates suggest that if the new tax laws were to kick in Ibrahimovic could cost the club as much as $100 million per season.

Bastos got another great goal last night to rescue a point for Jibe's boys away at Evian.

was in the stadium for that game, but was sitting at the other end of the pitch when bastos scored. just before he shot i'd been telling my dad that usually bastos shoots straight into the defenders or high above, and once ina blue moon actually scored. glad he did in this case !

back from Asia for the summer joys of the L1, are you ;-)

yeah back for a few days to see lyon play (and also a bit to see my family when, for once, everyone's in the same place)

PSG continue their unbeaten run, 0-0 tonight v Bordeaux. The Guardian MBM'ed it, which is new.

with man utd so readily throwing away their title perhaps we have a new crapvincibles.

I somehow landed on last summer's transfer thread via a search and was startled to find that lapsed ILFer 'darraghmac' predicted Zlatan to PSG a year before it came to pass.

this post here

malbranque to lyon a year after he quit st etienne

helas pour aulas

Hold on boxall, isn't that post actually darragh (pbuh) naming Zlatan for a mentalists' XI?

France recall Diaby for World Cup qualifiers - Reuters

Lille were really good tonight vs Copenhagen. Digne the LB excellent and a superb MF display from Mavuba (don't know if he's been involved with the national team)

favourite bit of fitba trivia - rio mavuba was born in international waters

Piece on Lyon, http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story/_/id/1151564/andy-brassell:-restructuring-lyon-shuffle-their-pack?cc=5739

what's your take Jibe? I see bastos scored yet again at the weekend, he also wasted a great chance where a simple square pass would have led to an almost certain goal. He was playing on the right from what I could tell, is that usual for him?

found this interesting http://inbedwithmaradona.com/journal/2012/9/5/adrien-rabiot-the-future-of-paris-st-germain.html

the only time i've seen him play he looked skillful but all left foot (which hasn't done robben any harm) so much so that he wouldn't even attempt a right footed cross even after he'd beaten his man and got to the byline.

didn't know him before the game against bordeaux but he seems nice.
quite a surprise from ancelotti. and nice way to answer to the critics saying there are no french players in the team anymore : jallet, sakho, rabiot, armand, matuidi, bodmer, menez, gameiro, hoarau... (they don't all play regularly... but they have all played so far !).

http://inbedwithmaradona.com/storage/adrien2.jpg

great picture, he looks like my type of player

yeah that's a pretty classic picture

Adrien Rabiot quickly got noticed for his passing range and composure on the ball and was offered a six-year contract at Manchester City in 2005, another club on the cusp of proceeding to major, Arab-financed overhauls. But he only stays for six months, leaving England with the feeling of being misunderstood by his team-mates and coaching staff, played in the wrong positions and asked the wrong instructions.

he seems fun

looking at that pic i was expecting a pastore dribbler rather than a slender fellaini (early dmc edition)

Yeah wtf is that about? He'd've been ten then, and scarcely more worldly than the City of them days.

Too early for a dedicated Adrien Radiot thread? I'm kind of gutted he slipped through the 'child prodigy' net, that thread's designed to catch all tiddlers.

He was at City when he was 13 so that would probably have been 2008.

http://www.sofoot.com/IMG/img-zlatan-ibrahimovic-psg-1368441093_620_400_crop_articles-169542.jpg

Need that shirt. I wonder if they'll sell it spelt in the singular: parisien ET champion

ahah. everything is possible : rêvons plus grand !

enjoy the first of possibly many titles, alxtc and baaderonixx !
also.... hahahaha i didn't stay up till the end of the game so did not get a chance to admire the beautiful trolling at work with that tshirt. parisiens et champions, that's amazing. there's no way ppl aren't complaining about it right?
xp: i want one for me that says parisien et pas champion :'(

"Parisien, Ilxor ET champion"

image macro idea: pic of agaricus bisporus w/ text "parisien et champignon". if you can find one that looks like ibrahimovic you hit the jackpot

you mean "champignon de paris"

that's what i am referring to, it's not what i mean

btw - they also got the domain:
http://parisiensetchampions.psg.fr/

champions !
http://www.psg.fr/fr/PSGTV/800102/Video/7751/Mamadou-Sakho-presente-les-champions
and celebrating tonight at Trocadero and on all Paris bridges !

Félicitations!

riots at trocadero at the moment and CRS vans passing in front of my place at full speed to get there : Paris will always be Paris !

http://i.imgur.com/PFDiBjX.jpg

L'Equipe saying Tevez and Falcao are off to Monaco

Tevez will be closer to his relatives at least a little bit amirite?

I hope Monaco (and maybe some others) will have big names next year to keep things interesting and exciting for everybody.
it was so silly the panic due to the celebration yesterday. Hoepefully it will be quieter next year !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/may/18/monaco-french-courts-tax

there's no way the lfp can win this right?

no probably not. asking for a one-time payment of 200M€ is such a farce tho and would def make for some "hilarious" conspiracy talk every time monaco get a single dodgy call going their way.
the three clubs coming up from ligue 2 next season will be monaco, nantes and guinguamp. it's good to see 2 of the most titled and storied clubs come back to ligue 1. as for guingamp, they're a tiny club from a tiny city that sometimes shows up in ligue 1. they are famous for winning the coupe de france in 2009 against rennes when they were still a ligue 2 club (rennes truly are capable of fucking up everything they do - this, their ligue 1 campaigns every year, this year's coupe de la ligue final), being the club where drogba & malouda became famous and previously being owned by Noël Le Graët, the current French Football Federation president.

I'm always amazed at how these little anonymous places can support top-level French clubs. I've never heard of Guingamp, Sochaux, Troyes or Valenciennes for any other reason. Maybe it's the same here, idk - are Stoke, Reading, West Bromwich and Sunderland completely unknown outside the UK?

Even then these are all big places - Guingamp's population appears to be less than half the size of its stadium.

i started writing that the places you named were bigger cities than guingamp, but then i decided to check and it turns out the population of sochaux is less than that of guingamp. but that one is a special case, they have peugeot factories and there's a historical link between peugeot and the club that helped it make its place in ligue 1. valenciennes and troyes have populations of 50k and 70k, so not huge cities, but big enough.
tbh in that list of english cities you've given, were it not for football, i'd have no clue about places like stoke, west bromwich or sunderland (reading i know because of a music festival there).

So PSG end up winning the title (big surprise there) with zlatan scoring 30 goals - first time in ligue 1 since JPP (that's jean-pierre papin to all you non-french, non-guignols de l'info watching people). their game against lorient was also ludovic giuly's last one as he's retiring. as was ronan le crom, psg's 4th goalkeeper, who subbed in for areola (psg's 3rd keeper) during the game. he then got a red card which meant that for the last 10mns, psg had defender mamadou sakho in the goals. quite an entertaining way to cap off a season!

marseille came in to this last day of play knowing they would finish in second place whatever happened. this is quite a surprise when you consider they didn't have much of a bench. they did have a few class players, - mandanda, nkoulou, valbuena -, that kept them in the race almost all season. in the battle for european spots, lyon won and kept their third place so they'll go to the champion's league. 14th time placing in the top 3 in 15 years, woot ! lisandro lopez scored and made huge hugging signs to the stands, so that probably means that he is leaving for sure. well, that plus his tears at the end of the game. surprise of the season nice end up in 4th place, so they get the europa league spot. claude puel took this team from the bottom of the table to quite an impressive finish, behind joint 2nd best ligue 1 scorer cvitanich - bound to show up in transfer rumours. which is the fate of aubameyang, with whom he's tied, for st etienne. they had a great season, finishing 5th and winning the league cup. they will play in the europa league too.

lille did their usual "reverse rennes", meaning bad start to the season and then great second half but it wasn't enough to grab a european spot. first time in 4 or 5 years they'll be missing europe. might give them a chance to be more competitive in ligue 1 from the start of next season, rather than a few months in. bordeaux is 7th and they'll be playing the coupe de france final this saturday against evian thonon gaillard. last year's champions, montpellier, end up in 9th place.

the three teams to go down are brest, nancy and troyes. for the first two, this was known before the last day of play. troyes had a small chance of staying up but they lost their game. they have a coach who gave an interview a while back saying he'd rather lose and play attractive football than win ugly iirc. i guess his wish came true.

Nice finished fourth? I was reading a long piece yesterday saying the fight for third was between Lyon, St Etienne and Lille.

Assuming Monaco now leap up towards PSG, what prospects of a third team challenging at the top? Would it require an oligarch to buy Marseille, Lyon or Bordeaux? Any prospect of that happening, or are you going to be another two-team league?

before the day's play, lyon was on 64 pts, St etienne 62, nice and lille 61. the reason why nice wasn't mentioned in the race for third place is that their goal difference was not good enough to have a chance to overtake lyon. meanwhile lille and st etienne were playing each other on the last day. their goal difference was somewhat similar to lyon's so depending on who won, and if lyon had lost, they might have ended up in 3rd spot. but they drew, while nice won, so nice ends up in 4th.

monaco is definitely leaping up towards psg. they've already spent more money in this offseason than any other french club bar psg has spent in the last two ! as of today, it doesn't look like any other club will be taken over by an oligarch. every so often you hear about how marseille might be sold to some billionaire, especially since the club belongs *gasp* to a woman. but margarita louis-dreyfus has repeatedly said she wants to keep the club and intends to run it. aulas has been a few times to the middle east and every time he does, rumours abound that he's looking for some rich oil/gas sheikh to take over, but i don't think that's going to happen. as for bordeaux, i've not heard a single rumour about them so who knows. their owners are notoriously skint so who knows what would happend if they were ever offered a good price.

but, tbh, i think that while monaco and psg will probably dominate the league, marseille lyon lille still have a chance of challenging at the top. if you look at this season, marseille and lyon had about as much money to spend in the offseason as i have in my bank account. both teams are actively trying to curtail their spending right now. and yet, lyon was tied for first with psg at the halfway mark, marseille were only a couple points away from psg for most of the second half of the season. in the case of lyon, and this may be wishful thinking on my part as a lyon fan, i think that in a couple of years, after their new stadium is built and they've played with their youth academy players for a while to give them a chance to become more experienced, thus giving them some time to clean up their finances, they probably will be able to compete with the big2.

great posts jibe!

what of the players who hae carried a bit of transfer rumour buzz over the past couple seasons - ayew, belhanda, grenier etc.?

Thanks for this Jibe, great posts indeed!

glad you enjoyed them.
as for the players with transfer rumour buzz... ayew (you're talking about the andré, rather than jordan, obv) hasn't been too much in transfer rumours. oh wait no, he has been linked to arsenal, but then again if you're a young player with even a bit of success in ligue 1, you will without a doubt be associated to arsenal at some point. he's had an ok to good season - one of the better players for om, though still a level or two below mandanda, nkoulou, valbuena. tbh i'm not really sure where he might go. he's not good/consistent enough to warrant a trade to a big team, he prob might stay in marseille unless they get a good offer for him (say anything over 12M€). as i said the other day, marseille has no money, like most french clubs, so they'll sell to buy.

belhanda had a good season. his numbers aren't as good as last season's but last season was an outlier for every one in montpellier. and this season he had to make do without giroud upfront, who was replaced by far less threatening forwards, so more focus was put on belhanda. i had him in my fantasy football league and got mad a couple of times for ex a couple months ago, he took a penalty and decided to try a panenka... it was stopped by the keeper. considering the fact that his contract ends next year, he'll probably leave this summer. at some point in time he was also rumoured to go to arsenal. most of montpellier's main players from their title season are slowly leaving - giroud last summer, yanga mbiwa this winter, prob belhanda this summer.

grenier has been tragically inconsistent too. he and gourcuff spent most of the season being injured, usually one would replace the other on the injured list. he's spent a lot of games making the wrong choices, trying impossible things rather than simpler, better options etc. but, he also usually managed to shine in one way or another. take his last 5 games for example. i don't think a single lyon fan would tell you he played well and in a consistent manner, yet he also scored a cracking volley at the last second for a win against montpellier, and two fabulous free-kicks in the last 2 games. if i were him, i'd stay for a year more in lyon to work on my consistency rather than go to a big club and spend time on the bench. aulas declared this weekend that grenier "is 37M€, no less". lol@aulas and his usual BS. they have to renegotiate his contract, hopefully he'll likely stay unless a good offer comes - something you'll basically hear about most players in ligue 1. oh, can you guess to which club he's most been linked? i'll give you one guess.

the french press are really lazy when it comes to creating transfer rumours is the main take away from all this.

i was starting to write pages about transfer prospects from evevry single team in ligue 1 but then i realised this message was already tl;dr. i might do that another time if i'm still not very busy at work.

after moutinho and rodriguez and with falcao and others to come, Monaco are likely to have a great team next year.
as a parisian, I'm looking forward to this exciting season !

should be exciting, but i don't think monaco, regardless of who they get this offseason, will be able to compete with psg. they're changing half of their team at least so it'll take a year, would be my guess, before they challenge psg for top spot. but yeah, next season should be exciting anyways. and as a parisian i'm looking forward to being able to see great football at the parc whenever i'm back home.

it's also good because it will take some pressure off paris. they won't be the only team all the others will want to beat.
it's kinda weird how, except for CR7, there have been no serious transfer rumours about paris so far...

i was starting to write pages about transfer prospects from evevry single team in ligue 1 but then i realised this message was already tl;dr. i might do that another time if i'm still not very busy at work.

No pressure Jibe, but I'd read this for sure. Minor bits of insight into other leagues is a foundation of my affection for ILF

How is Rybolovlev seen in the French media? Is there much interest in his dubious past?

Can France afford to shun them?

What happens if Ligue 1 doesn't back down and allow Monaco in? They could make all these great players spend a year playing the Cosmos or Team Bath. Maybe the Washington Diplomats.

Washington Generals, dammit

This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

ok windsor davies... i've started on this. warning: it's really really long.
for each club, i'll mention a player or two who's going to be in the news and transfer rumours. i'm doing this at work between other things so some of it might be incoherent or just not interesting at all. some of the names you'll prob have heard of, others maybe not. in some cases it might be that the players i mention won't even be traded by their teams at all (though considering the financial position most french clubs are in, if you come at them with a good enough offer, usually meaning anything above 10-12M€, they'll pack the player's bag for him). anyways, i've started this but think it might be a bit too much if i do all clubs at once, so here it is for the top 10 clubs...

psg:
gameiro - needs play time else where. was in the spotlight previously while playing for lorient. transferred to psg just dayss before they were acquired by qatari sheikh, who, tbh, were looking for players a class above him. he's a quick player, who breaks for runs in the defense's back. he scored at an ok rate with the scraps of matches he got here and there. scored two on the last day against lorient, where he got a warm ovation.
sakho - all year long, there have been rumours about him wanting to leave because ancelotti played alex rather than him along side thiago silva. there will keep being rumours, but there is no way he is leaving psg for a few reasons. he counts as a home grown player (with chantôme too, possibly rabiot coming back from his loan at toulouse), he's a fan favourite, he's also a very promising defender (who can play gk as we saw on the last day) and hopfully in a few years he'll be presented as psg's maldini or something.

marseille:
ayew - mentioned him before.
nkoulou - damn good defender. few rumours sending him to barcelona. marseille would be crazy to let him go but they are strapped for cash (like most ligue 1 teams) so they might pack his bags for him were they to receive a very good offer.
valbuena - more or less in the same situation as nkoulou.

lyon:
the entire team is for sale if the price is right, is more o less aulas' philosophy. amongst the names most rumoured to be leaving, lisandro, gourcuff, gonalons (would be insane to let him go, as lyon have no back up d-mid), lovren, briand, réveillère. can't really write about all of those, i'll just say that a couple weeks ago, some spanish sports newspaper (marca maybe?) had a poll to ask who barcelona should purchase to fill in the gap in defense. hummels was the runaway favourite until a bunch of french websites got in on it and pushed lovren to the top of that list. kind of hilarious to read the comments in very poor spanish, as well as the ones written in proper spanish (so possibly barca fans?) expounding the qualities of lovren and how barca should def consider him. réveillère and gourcuff might stay if they agree to lower salaries, lisandro is almost certtainly leaving considering his reactions during the last game. gomis might leave too and then lyon would have ot depend on its academy players (lacazette, benzia, martial).

nice:
cvitanich - joint top scorer with aubameyang, came from ajax for cheap, probably the best purchase of the previous offseason (only 1.5M€). argentine, with dual citizenship with croatia. wily player who is very good at provoking penalties (that's the nicer way of putting it). my guess is he'll stay with nice to play the europa league but tbh good players rarely stay for long in ligue 1 so if a good club in a bigger league contacts him he'll prob want to leave. he could fetch a good price seeing as he still has 2 years left on his contract.
other names you might hear about: bauthéac, maybe eysseric (he who got a 10 match ban for breaking another player's leg)

St-etienne:
aubameyang - joint top scorer with cvitanich. his second half of the season was not as good as the first. fast player who runs behind the defense (kind of like gameiro). i sas more of him during the second half when he was sometimes a bit clumsy in front of goal, but overall a good player.
other names: guilavogui

lille:
payet - one of lille's best players this season, he has a double-double (more than 10 goals & 10 assists). plays on the right wing.
chedjou - central defender. some rumours are sending him to monaco, others to galatasaray?!?!

bordeaux:
trémoulinas - at the end of every season you hear that some clubs are interested in trémoulinas, yet at the start of every season he is still at bordeaux. could this summer be the one where he finally leaves? he's a good left back, who loves to come up the field.

lorient:
aliadière - finished with 14 goals, good enough for fifth best. he's bound to leave somewhere else this offseason. considering the fact he's 30 he'll go a for a big paycheck so you might see him end up in england?
ecuele manga - good defender, think he took over from koscielny at the spot and is doing quite well.
traoré - plays attacking midfield. scored a few goals from outside the box, truly a good cunter of the ball. problem is he spent quite a bit of the season injured.

montpellier:
belhanda - see above
cabella - another attacking midfield, played mostly on the right wing i think. but montpellier are prob only gonna let one of the two go, and it's bound to be belhanda. cabella might show up in some rumours but he's staying is my guess.

toulouse:
capoue - def midfield. he and sissoko were two of the most lusted after d-mid in ligue 1 for the past few years. sissoko left to newcastle this winter but to me capoue is the better of the two. every summer sadran says he's not leaving until he receives an extremely good offer. this summer will be the same, but at some point he'll probably let him go. he'll prob end up in england.
ben yedder - young center forward, plays for the france u21 team and was among the bunch that made some noise when they decided to go party between two crucial qualification games against norway in october. up till that moment he was having a very good season, scoring 6 in 8 games. after being in the news for his antics, he kind of lost his confidence. he seems to have gotten it back as he ended up with 15 goals, tied for fifth with aliadière.

lucas digne at lille gets linked a lot in the brit press

arsenal swapping gervinho and cash for gonalons is a popular one too

serge aurier?

also zouma, fofana, tabanou (lol sorry i'm not trying to be a dick here)

whats the scoop on yaya sanago btw

haha, i thought about adding digne, aurier & zouma. but tbh i'm doing this at work and i make no claims about having all the names. as for fofana, which one are you talking about? if it's the lyon one, he hasn't played all that much this season and his status depends a bit on what happens to gonalons. if lyon sell gonalons for gervinho + cash, i'll eat my shoe herzog-style (not really)... lyon got burned enough buying lille players and seriously trading gonalons aka the player who played most for lyon this season and has no backup (maybe fofana) for a winger who hasn't played all that much and has mostly been shit sounds like a shit deal.

i didn't mention lucas digne because he started playing for lille only this season and i can't see them letting half of their defence leave all at once. chedjou's been here longer so earned the right to leave & btw apparently chedjou to galatasaray is done so they ought to keep digne.
zouma is still quite young. he should not leave st etienne. aurier might leave but he's also one of the younger players on that squad and there are other players that should be allowed to leave before he is (capoue, tabanou as you rightly said, rabiot leaving back to psg). as for yaya sanogo, don't know much about him cos he played in ligue 2 and it's already hard enough for me to keep up with ligue 1 from abroad.

remember watching some clips of tremoulinas last summer (sigh) when he was linked with qpr, the wee man looked a very fun player

i would hope there's still enough money in french football to take barton and mbia back off our hands

tremoulinas is indeed quite the entertaining player.
as for your second statement. barton seems to enjoy himself in france, he's gotten into a few twitter clashes with french football celebrities and seems to be taking a liking to life in marseille. don't know if marseille really want to keep him as he's been ok but not really amazing. btw the other day, when asked which player in ligue 1 most impressed him, he said toulouse's rabiot, an 18yr old left footed kid on loan from psg.
as for mbia, how can you even think of sending him back. the man is a true genius, always good for some memorable quotes and great antics. as for on-the-field, well um yeah ok. he was quite good at mrseeille, just had a tendency to try extremely risky moves at the worst of times - i seem to remember him trying a coup du sombrero (dammit don't know the name in english - basically you kick the ball above a player's head and retrieve on the other side) against a forward in his own box. makes for entertaining times !

lol i'm not sure the english would have a word for such sorcery

mbia did seem entertaining at first but unfortunately qpr is where eccentrics go to die

thanks jibe

aubemayang is impressive, reminds me of a young torres

The English for everything fancy is 'flick'.

Rabiot is an ILF guy-to-watch iirc. I half-expected Barton to pitch up at Napoli next, in a tour of disreputable port cities, before ending his career in a knife brawl at Feyenoord. I doubt Rafa'd have him though.

i eventually remembered that 'fannydangle' was le mot juste