Former Leeds United striker Jean-Kevin Augustin has remarkably been excluded from Nantes’ first-team squad after the Ligue 1 side’s manager criticised his fitness.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Augustin’s fitness has been questioned, with Marcelo Bielsa being very vocal about the fact he wasn’t up to the standards expected of him at Leeds.
His unwillingness to put in the hard yards at Elland Road led to Bielsa wanting nothing to do with him, and Leeds eventually agreed to let him join Nantes on a free transfer, despite remaining locked in a legal battle with RB Leipzig about the obligation to buy they reportedly agreed in January.
However, Nantes’ Sporting Director said earlier this year that both Leeds and Leipzig gave him permission to move to France on a free, and it seems as though that was the best decision for Leeds.
The Whites aren’t now stuck with an unfit player with a considerable wage packet, and his struggle for fitness is now Nantes’ problem, and it’s a problem they don’t seem to be dealing with very well.
“We have now left him out of team training so that he can reach an acceptable level of fitness. He is following an individual fitness regime this week with Cyrille Moine (fitness coach) and that will still be the case next week,” Christian Gourcuff said.
“We integrated him, but we saw that he was not at a sufficient level. His lack of pre-season has penalised him so much that he can not be competitive.”
It’s as if we’ve jumped in a time machine and transported ourselves to early 2020 as once again one of Augustin’s managers criticise his fitness.
Hopefully, the former PSG man can get his career back on track sooner rather than later, because things aren’t looking good for him at the moment.
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