Bordeaux Chipping Away to Safety Under Club Legend Ramé
“Is there a Ramé effect? The future will confirm that - or not.” It’s early days for Ulrich Ramé as Bordeaux coach, but it already seems as if he’s as steady a personality as a boss as he was as the goalkeeper that served Les Girondins for the best part of 15 years.
When replacing the beleaguered Willy Sagnol at the helm, the new man was faced with the prospect of a genuine rearguard action. Bordeaux had won just two of their last 11 games in all competitions under Sagnol and were looking over the shoulders having begun the campaign with the expectation of pushing towards Europe.
After gaining a late lead and promptly losing it again on his debut at the Mahmut Atlantique against Bastia, Ramé was faced with a tough couple of follow-up missions, with successive visits south to Monaco and Marseille. Losing at the current second-placed team in Ligue 1 would have put almost immeasurable pressure on the trip to the Vélodrome, against another deposed and struggling giant.
Then again, maybe Monaco were just what the doctor ordered for Ramé’s nascent reign. The 2009 champions have been Leonardo Jardim’s bête noire since he arrived in the Principality. In five games against Bordeaux in all competitions, Jardim’s Monaco have now drawn one and lost four, scoring two and conceding 12.
That’s thanks to Ramé and company’s surprise win on Friday night - a result that, perhaps with the subsequent happenings of the weekend, is garnering more attention for re-opening the race for second place, but means something totally different and equally as important to the victors.
The match will probably also be remembered for one of the great curiosities of the season, with the disallowing of Vagner Love’s late goal after he followed up his own penalty, saved by Jerôme Prior. Referee Benoît Bastien correctly applied the rarely-used law 14 on penalties, which decrees that if the taker follows up his own kick and touches the ball while a player from his team encroaches, the defending team gets a free-kick. Ricardo Carvalho had wandered deep into the penalty area, realised his error and began to run back out when Vagner was taking the kick - before the Brazilian striker was left looking totally non-plussed by Bastien’s award of a Bordeaux free-kick.
The biggest compliment one can pay to Ramé and his coaching team is that the incident was a rare moment of confusion in what was a composed Bordeaux performance. Far from being flattened by the costly concession of that equaliser to Bastia’s Axel Ngando, they were made more determined by it.
Ok, this wasn’t the inspired, aesthetically pleasing Bordeaux of that 2009 vintage, when a prime Yoann Gourcuff was conducting the orchestra, but it was a move towards the team showing their more effective face of recent years; gritty, physical, organised and tough to break down. They were happy with a minority of possession; just 37.5%, the second-lowest of any visitors to Stade Louis II this season. Lorient, the only team to have less of the ball there (35.5%), also won. It was, however, used wisely, with 10 shots produced from that, and the tackle count of 30-21 in Bordeaux’s favour showed that they had come to battle.
That much was clear from the team sheet. The teenager Adam Ounas, a left-footer previously used as an inverted winger, was moved infield from the right to more of a central position, removing much of the previous obligation to defend. In time, the plan - even if only executed away from home - will hopefully give him more freedom to provide the team’s creative clout going forward.
Adding some cutting edge to this side has become even more important since the January departure of Wahbi Khazri - previously the team’s chief creator, with five goals, seven assists and 2.7 key passes per match - to Sunderland. Conversely the muscle has been missing too, with Henri Saivet (3.8 tackles per match) also heading out to the north-east of England, in his case to Newcastle. Frustratingly for Girondins, their nouveau captain and spiritual leader has been sparingly used since switching to the Premier League. Khazri and Saivet remain, statistically, Bordeaux’s top two performers for the season, with respective ratings of 7.44 and 7.33.
Ramé’s desire to add physical depth saw him place robust left-back Maxime Poundjé, ostensibly a rival to Diego Contento, in front of the former Bayern Munich man on a reinforced left-hand side of the pitch. In the event, Contento’s performance was complete enough that Poundjé rarely had to make last-ditch interventions - Contento made two tackles and seven interceptions, meaning Poundjé made just a single tackle, but contributed three dribbles.
The complement on the right was Thomas Touré, Bordeaux’s outstanding player on the night, rating 8.76. The 22-year-old opened the scoring with a neat finish after one first-half corner wasn’t properly cleared, before supplying one of his own to give Ounas an easy chance to snatch what turned out to be the winner - the 19-year-old’s 5th goal of the season, making him the team’s joint-second top scorer.
Touré was all-action, with two efforts at goal, three key passes and two dribbles, but it was his defensive efforts that gave Bordeaux the sort of solidity that Ramé was looking for. He made four tackles and two interceptions, more than ably combining with André Biyogo Poko, the right-back who made an impressive 11 tackles on his own. This, in turn, gave Ounas the licence to benefit from his altered position, getting four efforts on goal away and contributing two key passes.
The difference between this and the last away game - a 4-0 defeat in the Garonne derby at lowly Toulouse that turned out to be Sagnol’s final match in charge - was enormous. The readjustment back to 4-2-3-1, and finding the middle ground between security and incision, is a big step forward.
Ramé wisely stopped short of saying Bordeaux are safe from the drop after the game - next week’s opponents Marseille, themselves in trouble, are only three points behind, after all. Yet Bordeaux look to have the smarts to make the most of OM’s acute anxiety at the Vélodrome. As he seeks to prove himself, Ramé is not short of a test or two.
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