Over the last few seasons, Nancy had been making steady progress in Ligue 2. They managed a 17th place finish in 2017/18 — narrowly avoiding relegation just a season after they were relegated from Ligue 1 — before earning a 14th place finish in 2018/19, a 12th place finish in 2019/20 and an eighth-place finish in 2020/21. Heading into the 2021/22 campaign, it appeared as though Les Chardons could be set to pose a promotion challenge for the first time since that 2016/17 relegation under new boss Daniel Stendel, who’d previously managed Hearts in the Scottish Premiership, Barnsley in the EFL Championship and Hannover in 2. Bundesliga.
However, things quickly went wrong for the Grand Est-based club under Stendel and the German ultimately departed from Nancy after just 10 games in charge — winning none of them and managing to earn just four draws, leaving Nancy in a precarious position at the bottom of Ligue 2 and in search of a new manager to now lead their recovery. Former France international player Benoît Pedretti took the reins as caretaker following Stendel’s departure until earlier this month when 61-year-old Albert Cartier became the third man to sit in the Nancy hot seat this term, now tasked with leading the struggling club away from the relegation zone, a challenge that won’t be an easy one.
At present, Nancy are sat firmly at the bottom of Ligue 2 on 15 points with at least one less game played than the three closest teams to them on the table. While survival isn’t impossible, it’s getting more and more unlikely by the week and if Cartier is to successfully turn things around at Stade Marcel Picot, he’ll need to start getting results ASAP. His tenure did start rather positively, with his side managing a 2-1 win over Bastia-Borgo, but their most recent league game, a 4-0 defeat to title-challenging Toulouse may have given Cartier a harsh but necessary reality check on the task at hand.
So, what has gone wrong for Nancy this season? More than I will be able to discuss in this analysis, unfortunately, though they’ve experienced their fair share of bad luck too. However, this tactical analysis piece and team-focused scout report aims to highlight some of the key areas in which Nancy must improve under Cartier if they’re to manage a late survival push this season. I’ll aim to highlight areas in which their tactics and individual performances/decisions have let them down this season to point out where Cartier needs to focus his efforts most heavily in his new job. All stats and data used for this analysis has come from Wyscout unless otherwise stated.
Final third concerns
To briefly explain Nancy’s style of play and tactics in possession this season, they’ve consistently been a very aggressive team with and without the ball, looking to press and win the ball high up the pitch a lot, while also looking to quickly progress the ball into those areas. Their performances on the ball, in general, haven’t been much of a concern. They’ve been quite a possession-dominant side in Ligue 2 this season, keeping 54.4% of the ball on average (fourth in the league), while they’ve played the sixth-most progressive passes in the league (66.29 per 90) with the ninth-best progressive pass accuracy (74.9%), indicating that their ability to break lines and get the team moving through the thirds hasn’t been particularly poor.
Additionally, when in the final third, they’ve not been particularly poor at setting up goalscoring opportunities via a variety of different skills, with Nancy making the most dribbles of any Ligue 2 side this season (33.7 per 90) with the eighth-best accuracy (52.6%), the seventh-most key passes (2.9 per 90) and generating the sixth-most touches inside the opposition penalty area (14 per 90).
All of this has helped them to generate a decent number of shots (9.99 per 90 — the seventh-most in Ligue 2) but their shot accuracy has often let them down (32.6% — the second-lowest shot accuracy in Ligue 2). Furthermore, they’ve generated the ninth-highest xG in France’s second-tier this term (22.89), and this is a far more respectable number than their actual goals scored, which sits at 16, giving them the second-worst goalscoring record in the league.
This backs up my belief that up until they reach the opposition’s penalty area, their performances in possession aren’t much cause for concern. Their big need in terms of what they’re doing with the ball is focusing on what they do inside the box and finishing more efficiently.
One thing I’d try to focus on to achieve this is decision-making inside the opposition box. Too often, Nancy’s strikers, primarily Mickaël Biron, Andrew Jung and Mamadou Thiam, are taking shots with too much haste and not enough care. There are many examples of poor shot selection and, in turn, poor decision-making inside the opposition box in Nancy’s performances this season.
Figure 1 shows an example of this poor decision-making in crucial moments. Here, we see right-forward Biron on the ball inside the penalty area, having just cut in on his weaker left foot. Despite being on his weaker foot here and at a difficult angle from which to score, the attacker takes the shot and, as was likely in this situation, misses the target which leads to this opposition box entry being wasted.
Even more frustrating for Nancy in this particular example is that if Biron had been less hasty here and gotten his head up, he could’ve spotted his teammate, left-forward Jung, in the box giving him a good option to square the ball to. Jung is in a far more favourable shooting position here and has enough separation from the nearest defender to create some space for a shot, should the ball be played to him. However, Nancy’s tendency to snatch at shooting opportunities reared its head here and the opportunity was lost.
