This time last year, Strasbourg were dreaming of Champions League football, flying high in France’s top-flight and aiming to snatch a top-four spot from under the noses of Lyon, Nice, Lille and Monaco.
12 months on, that very same side are closer to the bottom of the table than they are to the top. And, with Ligue 1 expanding the number of clubs who will be relegated at the end of this season from three to four, there is a very real possibility that Strasbourg will suffer the same fate that befell Metz last term.
From coupon-busting overachievers to the ignominy of relegation, all within the blinking of an eye.
There are a multitude of reasons why Strasbourg currently find themselves in 16th place, with just two wins from 19 games.
And the form of Ludovic Ajorque – top scorer in each of the last three campaigns – is undoubtedly high among them. No one epitomises Strasbourg’s sudden and rapid decline better than him.
Bundesliga-bound Ludovic Ajorque was a target for Wolves, Newcastle and Everton
Just last summer, when his reputation was at it’s most glittering, the 6ft 6ins centre-forward was attracting admiring glances from almost half of the Premier League (Sky Sports); Everton, West Ham, Leicester City, Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle United and AFC Bournemouth all sending scouts to watch Ajorque batter and bruise Liverpool during a 3-0 pre-season friendly defeat at Anfield.
Wolverhampton Wanderers, per The Sun, offered £10 million, Strasbourg holding out for almost double.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course. When Strasbourg were rejecting eight-figure bids from clubs on the other side of the Channel, they surely did not expect that Ajorque would begin the following season with just one goal in 13 games. An alarming dip in form which has seen his market value shrink by a staggering 66 per cent.
‘He hasn’t had a great season’
On Tuesday afternoon, Ajorque completed his medical at Mainz, crossing the border into the Bundesliga. Mainz, DNA say, will pay just £6 million. A third of the fee Strasbourg wanted around six months ago.
Even his new coach, Bo Svensson, accepts that Ajorque is arriving in Germany on the back of one of his poorest seasons in some time.
“Obviously, he hasn’t had a great (scoring) rate this season,” Svensson tells Kicker. “But in the years before, he proved his goal threat in a league where it’s not easy to score. I know him very, very well.
“We’ve been trying to get him for a long time. He’s big, has a lot of power, a real threat in the box. He gives us physicality and also likes to work without the ball.”
Ajorque is no ‘one-season wonder’. He found the net at a reliable rate across three seasons at Strasbourg. But, with his 29th birthday just weeks away, has Ajorque already passed his peak?
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