Bonjour! We’re halfway through our second season as a Ligue 1 side, brushing shoulders with the likes of Monaco, PSG, and Bordeaux, but sadly not competing with them (yet). We’re not badly-placed for European qualification at the minute though, so let’s see how it pans out.

Johan Cruyff’s Bordeaux are very good. It’s another match we probably deserve more from after having the lion’s share of chances, but CM01/02 hero Sebastien Frey is on form a year ahead of schedule to frustrate us…

Just two days later it’s cup action, and we dispose of Ligue 2 Niort without even breaking a sweat, as the front two get a goal each to send us through to face Strasbourg. Yippee!

PSG may only be three points ahead of us, but the gulf in class is far greater than the gulf in points. We do come to life on the hour, but by that point, the damage has already been done..

Our white third kit gets a rare outing a week later, and it proves to be something of a lucky charm as we cruise in Toulouse, but a clean sheet is obviously out of the question…

And then completely out of the blue, we only go and beat Monaco! The usual barrage of late corners comes, but we hold on for a famous win that’s worthy of a shock defeat headline…

Do not adjust your 1995 Hewlett Packard monitors, you did read that correctly…

We’re without the injured Kaiku for the cup game with Strasbourg, which is all over inside 20 minutes, with Pascal Nouma adding a late cherry on top to send us out for another year.

Aurelio and Nando are hardly playing for their loan clubs, so I decide to recall them. The former doesn’t take long to find a new home, but the latter will stay with us for a bit…

There’s no sign of the Monaco heroics from a week ago against Marseille, and once again we’re brushed aside with ease, as a last minute goal from ACG offers scant consolation…

We do seem to have a habit of making games look way closer than they actually are, and we do just that against relegation-threatened Nancy. I guess it’s three points regardless…

After having to come from behind twice against rock bottom Rennes, we finally get our act together and a Calle hat trick and Kaiku brace finally put the stubborn b*stards to bed..

The board are easily pleased, apparently hammering the bottom side is a good result…

We battle back after Bakayoko’s early strike to leapfrog Montpellier into seventh place thanks to Kaiku’s late winner. We’re quietly putting a bit of a run together, that’s five wins in seven…

But it seems like I spoke too soon as we blow the chance to go level on points with sixth-placed Marseille after slumping to defeat at Lille, who are hovering above the drop zone…

We follow that loss up with another, this time at home to Nantes, with former Blackburn legend George Donis making sure for the visitors after an early Ferrero Da Rocha strike..

Auxerre make it three defeats on the bounce to make sure that brief run of form we went through is now firmly a thing of the past. Bernie Diomede just loves scoring against us…

But order is finally restored against Lyon, who in all honesty, aren’t up to much these days, but hopefully a goal each for three of the front four will give their confidence a bit of a boost..

And then this happens to one of my star men, which is basically the rest of the season. F*ck.

With Revilla injured, and Txutxi, Pascual, Garitano and Calle all suspended, I’m not expecting too much at Metz, so the fact we come away with a point isn’t bad considering..

We take the lead against Lens from the spot, and manage to hold onto it for a whole four minutes! But it’s all downhill from there on, as we fail to make our man advantage count…

A draw away at Guingamp, who are just below us in the table, does us very few favours, and we stay ninth after blowing yet another chance to climb a couple of places in the table..

The game with bottom-of-the-table Nimes comes at just the right time, and although we make hard work of it in the end, it’s three valuable points with one game left to play…

A win against Strasbourg to finish the season in style is obviously too much to ask. It would have gained us one place, but I’m not even sure if that would have meant Europe or not…

So we end up eighth, which is two places better than last season, so we’re definitely making progress, albeit slowly. Second-highest scorers behind champions Bordeaux, but the worst defence by a country mile. Just another season with the trusty old 2-3-1-2-2 formation..

Oh, French football association, you don’t half spoil us…

Here are the stats. For a second year running, it’s our keeper who is top for average ratings, which is definitely not a good thing. New boy Kaiku turned out to be a great signing like I knew he would, with 18 goals and 14 assists, and Calle managed 17 goals and 10 assists in his breakthrough season. Not bad at all.

The dust has barely settled, and I’m straight to work on trimming the squad of some excess, releasing Fontan, Xabier, Legaz, and The Lizard to hopefully make room for some new signings. They all filled spaces in the squad, but never really amounted to anything…

Spain won Euro 2000, beating Holland 2-1 in the final, with Basque boys Guerrero and Etxeberria in the starting eleven. Ed de Goey must be absolutely inconsolable…

And that about wraps things up for another season, and indeed this year. I hope you all have a great Christmas, and I’ll see you in the new year, when I hope you’ll join me to see if we receive a much-needed cash injection from the board, or whether it’ll be another summer of bargain basement shopping. Au Revoir!