Lyon's Alexandre Lacazette 'hurt and disappointed' by contract negotiations
The ink on Alexandre Lacazette's summer contract extension may now be dried, but the 24-year-old goal machine has some reservations about how it came to be.
Defending Ligue 1 Player of the Year and 27-goal man Lacazette signed a new deal in early August that will keep him at Lyon until 2019, though the French international claims to be "hurt and disappointed" by the conduct of club president Jean-Michel Aulas during negotiations.
Lacazette was also critical of manager Hubert Fournier for failing to do enough to support his star striker, reports lequipe.fr.
"It hurts", said the man who joined the Rhone-Alpes club as a 12-year-old in 2003. "I think that's the right word. When you're a young guy at the club, from the city, who's never behaved badly towards anyone, to be treated like that ... yes, it's hurtful.
"I'd just had my best season - I'd really helped the team to get back into the Champions League."
Amid transfer rumours this summer that suggested Lacazette was poised for a move to Arsenal or Liverpool, Lyon extended their star striker despite Aulas' decision to publicize his wage demands, creating a rift on the back of the club's most successful Ligue 1 finish since they last won the league in 2007-08.
"I would have preferred that he might act like in every negotiation," he said. "He could have said to me 'it's too much,' simply.
"He could have not employed this method that made me look like someone that I'm not. I had decided to stay - everything should have been straightforward."
Hampered by a back issue to start the season, Lacazette has yet to regain his goal-scoring touch, especially in light of the long-term layoff of teammate and playmaker Nabil Fekir.
Still, the eight-time capped French international senses he isn't getting the support from the 'gaffer that others are, with Fournier being unusually critical of his star player after a disappointing start to the season marked by a penalty miss against Gent in Champions League play.
"He could have explained what was happening," Lacazette added. "Of course I played some bad matches. You could say that I was rubbish and everything. But I had pains in my back. I wanted to help and it didn't do me any favours.
"I would have preferred that he defend me, that he might show that he was behind me rather than knocking me further and to agree with supporters who were criticising me.
"The simple fact of saying that I had played through some pain would have allowed people to understand that I was trying all the same."
Trouble in paradise for the defending Ligue 1 runners-up, who with the injury to Fekir compounded by Lacazette's lack of form, have started a campaign littered with mediocrity, sitting eighth on 12 points after eight matches.