Fixture congestion hurting us, says Baup

Marseille coach Elie Baup has blamed his team’s 1-0 loss to Bordeaux in Ligue 1 on their busy schedule.

A win would have sent Marseille top of the table, but Yoann Gouffran’s 52nd-minute goal helped Bordeaux into second.

The clash was Marseille’s seventh in the past month and Baup said the congested schedule was beginning to catch up with his team.

“We are the team in this league which played the biggest amount of matches. We had four matches in the qualifiers for the Europa League,” Baup said.

“We feel the result of all those matches. All those players missing, suspensions, injuries are important also.”

To make matters worse for Marseille, Lucas Mendes was sent off late in the clash after being ruled to have denied an obvious goalscoring opportunity.

The likes of Joey Barton, Loic Remy and Andre-Pierre Gignac are just three of several players sidelined by either injury or suspension.

Baup said his team needed to continue working hard and believes improving their ability to keep possession will be crucial in coming matches.

“We try to do what we can with the team we have. It was kind of incredible for the forwards (all injured),” he said.

“We have to deal with those situations. Once more, we lose a player on a red card. We have a lot of players injured but we have to stay organised as we did it most of the time.

“Maybe we should lose less balls. We lost many balls.”