The formal goodbye
Lens made it official on Thursday evening. Yannick Cahuzac, the club’s former captain who had been handed the first-team job with no fixed end date, is no longer in charge, two days after L’Équipe first revealed his exit.
The club’s statement described his spell as a period of transition and thanked him for the energy he had put into it. The numbers were less kind. Cahuzac, 41, took charge of nine matches after replacing Dino Toppmöller in mid-September and won three of them. Six defeats in nine is not a record any club with European football on its plate can carry for long, and Lens did not try to.
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Sage, from Selhurst Park back to Bollaert?
The timing of the announcement was hardly a coincidence. Pierre Sage was sacked by Crystal Palace at lunchtime on Thursday after 150 days at Selhurst Park, with Palace bottom of the Premier League on seven points from ten games. By the evening his name was at the top of the Lens shortlist again.
According to L’Équipe, Sage is the clear priority of Lens owner Joseph Oughourlian and the coming hours should settle the matter. Foot Mercato went further earlier in the day, reporting that a verbal agreement had already been reached and only details remained. Neither the club nor the coach has confirmed anything yet.
A short road home
Sage only left Lens in June to try his luck in England. His Palace tenure will go down as one of the shortest in recent Premier League memory, but in Artois he remains a known quantity: he knows the squad, the president and the expectations. For a club that has burned through two coaches since the summer, familiarity might be the selling point.
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