Le Puy – MHSC: “Mentally, it’s very worrying”, “we gave up”, regretted Jean-Louis Gasset after the heavy defeat in Haute-Loire

Pour Jean-Louis Gasset, cette défaite va faire mal… Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART

Montpellier fell heavily in the 32nd finals at Le Puy (4-0), Saturday December 21, against a team that plays three divisions below, to the great displeasure of its coach, who speaks of a failure that is above all mental.

Jean-Louis Gasset, what state of mind are you in after this defeat ?

It's a feeling of shame, it's a competition that could have given us a bit of oxygen. We're going to analyze it carefully. We were swept aside, we were eaten in all the duels. We missed the first two opportunities. Maybe if we had opened the scoring. Mentally, it's very worrying.

Exactly how do you explain this mental failure after resting??

Since I arrived, we have played many away matches, we have not taken a point, we have not scored a goal, that means that the situation was important. I hoped that in a competition, we could show more mental quality. There, we gave up.

Once we were behind, they played their game, there was a very good team opposite, there were two or three players who would not be out of place with us. For Nicolas Pays, it seemed as if the pitch was not bumpy for him, whereas for us, it was. It is a general state. I have been here for two months and at Mosson, little by little, we tried to find something, to catch up with higher teams. But there, tonight, we're going to have to get over it.

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Stéphane Dief, the Puy coach, said that maybe you would recover. He gave the example of Dunkerque, which he lost here last year in the Cup and which had a great end to its second season…

That’s nice. We will have to change a lot of things to have any hope of fulfilling the mission of saving ourselves in Ligue 1. We will have to do a good analysis of this match, because mentally, we don’t have the right to give up, it would be incredible to give up like that.

Jean- Louis, will you be able to change things in your squad ? Do the finances allow it ? What will the MHSC transfer window look like ?

It's vague. The players have also been in this frame of mind since the beginning of the season. They are not well, they are last in Ligue 1, we talk about them in other places. So Psychologically, it is very difficult to get the group back up. We tried little by little, we had gained a little confidence, by hanging on to the European teams at home. But there, the truth came back to haunt us. Being like that, playing like that and not having the character to react, it's very hard.

In professional football, we rarely talk publicly about mental preparation, what is being done in Montpellier ? Because listening to you, there seems to be a certain disorder.

It's been a whole since the beginning of the season. Montpellier is suffering. And now, the January transfer window will create even more uncertainty. The players are in that state. We saw it tonight, from the moment there was a response, we had to fight. Even if we conceded a goal on a set piece, we knew that it was one of their strengths. And that we, defensively, were not at full strength to fight on these free kicks. We have to change something.

What are you going to tell the players before they go on vacation??

Let them clear their heads, like us. Because we've been under pressure for two months, we've been suffering, we've been living very badly. We're trying to give hope, to say that it's possible. But this one is going to hurt us, even if it's another competition and we knew that we certainly weren't going to win the Coupe de France. The number one goal is to save the club. We're going to use that, we're going to say that it's a day without, we've been eaten, we've been swept away. And we will start again on January 4 in Lyon and then the last first leg, to try to complete the mission.