Sunday, November 01, 2009

 21:00 - FC Sochaux-Montbéliard / Paris Saint-Germain 

Giuly, Mamadou Sakho, Loris Arnaud and Jérémy Clément were the four players to come down with the disease which led to the postponement of last Sunday's 'clasico' at Marseille, a match which has been rescheduled for Friday November 20.

After a quarantine period of 72 hours following the swine flu outbreak, PSG resumed training on Wednesday in a session open to the public and the club doctor went public with a clean bill of health. Eric Rolland said: "The four sick players all feel fine. There are no other cases at the moment. Everyone is on Tamiflu and we're working on the basis that the virus is eradicated after three days of treatment and quarantine. The players will start to be vaccinated from the earliest possible date (Nov 15). Tamiflu has no secondary effects so everybody is theoretically up for selection for Sunday."

Giuly: "Swine flu knocks you sideways"

Giuly said: "I feel much better but it really hits you for six! I spent four days quarantined in bed unable to get up. I had two days of coughing and two days of fever. It came on just like that and it really knocks you sideways, but I'm OK now. I didn't fall ill on purpose! I wanted to play the game, the same goes for my team-mates! Who doesn't want to play in the 'clasico'?"

PSG head into the weekend 13th in Ligue 1 and without a win since Week 4 of the season when they beat Lille 3-0 at the Parc des Princes to go second in the standings. Now they find themselves behind Sochaux, who have won their last three Ligue 1 fixtures without conceding a goal, for the first time since the opening weekend of the season. Injuries to strikers Mevlut Erding and Guillaume Hoarau and defender Zoumana Camara have not helped PSG's cause.

"Things aren't looking good in the table," admitted Giuly. "We have to buck up our ideas and go to Sochaux to win. "Papus" Camara is coming back. We've got to look at it like that and say that things will be better in the future and that we've been unlucky with injuries and swine flu."

Erding to feature against former club?

Last season's top scorer Guillaume Hoarau (knee) and club captain Claude Makelele (suspension) both miss the trip. Camara could feature after making his return from three months out with phlebitis in a reserve team fixture last weekend.Turkish international striker Mevlut Erding, signed from Sochaux in the summer in a big money transfer, could make his return from a shoulder injury which has kept him out since Week 4 of the season.

Sochaux defender Jérémie Brechet said: "It's important for our image, a really big game and it will be interesting to play against Mevlut. They've got a lot of quality players. We're better with our backs to the wall but with one or two defeats we'll be back in the red zone."

Life withoutErding and Davies

Erding's goals - 11 in each of the last two seasons made him the club's top scorer on both occasions - kept Sochaux afloat. Francis Gillot's side have learnt to live without him and are getting used to playing without American international striker Charlie Davies, out for the season after suffering multiple injuries in a car crash in the United States earlier this month. Attacking midfielder Nicolas Maurice-Bélay is suspended and young midfielder Geoffrey Tulasne (thigh) is out.

Press reports stated that Ivan Stefanovic, Yassin Mikari and Bojan Jokic sat out training on Wednesday after coming into contact with a reserve team player suspected of having contracted swine flu. Subsequent tests revealed that no Sochaux players have the disease.

Bréchet: "Looking down table not up"

Bréchet is confident that Sochaux's players have kept their feet on the ground despite their impressive run. "We're a tough team to play against at the moment but we can't afford to get carried away and we have to keep working. We're five points clear of the relegation zone and for the moment I prefer to look down the table rather than up it."

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