FredVaFC59100

in 10 games it will be too late. The transfer window closes on August 31th. By the time heads roll down, you can make it back up to the top of the table regardless of the coach when most of the players are subpar. Another wasted season.

Looks to me that SR is all talk but no action regarding VA FC .How can you put trust in SR when their actions (keeping Chorley/Kantari for more than a year for example) clearly shows poor judgement. How does Chorley fare better than the previous owner ? We only have 4 mediocre "has been" recruits on free transfer, and now, they are talking about Free loan from LOSC and othe French teams. This is exactly Eddy Zdziech (previous owner)'s way of doing business in the last few years.. 3 teams and 3 relegations does raise legitimate concerns. Makes me wonder if the two promotions this year were more a strike of luck than anything else. Make me think that SR's strategy towards VA FC might be on purpose after all; They bought a good farm team training ground on the cheap, this is one way to toughen up young players in a good lower league to later send them out to flagship team (Southampton FC) if they do show some potential or dismiss them if they do not. France has a reputation of producing good players; Top teams in Spain, Italy and Belgium to name a few, regularly buy promising players from France's 2nd/3rd league. Oh well, I have been supporting VA for 40 years and will do until my last breath, I just can't wait for SR to get the hell out. I miss the 70s/80s, and more generally the pre Bosman regulation era, where everything was more simple w/o multi properties business model.

There has been a lot of talk from Ben Chorley & Co in March/April time-frame asserting we would go straight back up the following season; The day we got officially relegated, SR said they were deeply sadden and will do everything to minimize the stay in the 3rd division. i.e. they were already tuning down expectations... We are 2 weeks away from the first game and the squad is pretty weak. As expected, A lot of departures for only 4 arrivals on free transfers.. all mediocre players if you ask me. So, yeah, SR does not seem committed to go back up. Almost makes me regret the previous owner. The 3rd division is going to be very competitive this year, due to a lot of clubs used to first and second leagues being relegated in the past few years. I don't see us going back up (yet alone going ever back to the top league) anytime soon.

What I don't get is that SR always puts forward their "Scientific" approach to football with data based hiring, but yet, they keep on making bad decisions (for Valenciennes at least) whether it pertains to the management team or players on the pitch. The friendly games have so far, been underwhelming and the team shows no progress whatsoever. I predict mid-table standing at the end of the season.

I feel quite the opposite regarding Valenciennes' future. Ben Chorley is mediocre at best, He has made poor choices since day 1. This does not fare well for SR's top farm club structure.

I think the real problem with Valenciennes is twofold; First, we lost our identity under the new ownership; SR has turned the club into nothing more than a farm team for Southampton FC and Göztepe SK. Second, the sporting director, Ben Chorley is way over his head. He kept on making very poor choices (latest one was to keep Kantari as head coach); in a video (https://www.va-fc.com/videos/17301 at 14:16) he claims that Joachim Kayi Sanda is the best center back in the world. Maybe he is too humble, why not the best center back of the galaxy? I predict that we will stay in 3rd division for a looooonnnnnng time.