Le Lay : “Striker, a particular product”

Invited to the CFoot talk-show, Patrick Le Lay has discussed several news topic and answered questions about the Stade Rennais.

Logically questioned about the aborted transfer of Mevlüt Erding, the Stade Rennais chairman has affirmed that the club was warned by PSG this Monday at 2 pm. “Strikers are a particular product, which is very difficult to find” Le Lay regretted, after the several failures of his club on those cases this summer.
“We had a deal with Erding and with the PSG, but the latter didn’t find a forward to replace him”, the Rennes president explained. “We are disappointed, but they had warned us”. The player, was courted by the Stade Rennais “since a long time”, and was still “decided to come to Rennes” according to Le Lay.

There is still the possibility to use the last forty-eight hours of the transfer window to recruit a player... on this the Rennes chairman showed pessimistic, denying the existence of a “back-up plan” and mentioning the possibility of recruiting only this winter, but assuming in the same time that the situation could evolve before Wednesday night.

About British interest from Arsenal for Yann M’Vila, the former TF1 CEO was straight-out : Stade Rennais doesn’t want to sell him, to the astonishment of Arsène Wenger who was decided to recruit him. “We said to Wenger that we might begin the talks around an offer of 50 million euros, but no less” Le Lay warned.

According to our information, after having offered 20, and later 25 million euros, Arsenal made an offer of 30 million euros for the transfer. All offers were immediately rejected by an inflexible Stade Rennais.

Finally, Patrick Le Lay gave his view on Rennes’ beginning of the season, a squad which - to his great satisfaction - has the “best attack” of Ligue 1 with nine goals in four games, and which - with Europa League - “is trained for the international level”. A team which also is, according to the president, “weird but nice” in its ability to offer some large and beautiful victories, but also to make a complete mess of themselves, like ten days ago in Montpellier.
“I was ashamed at the game in Montpellier, Le Lay admitted. I left three minutes before the end.”