Samir Nasri refound his form on Sunday against Monaco, scoring OM’s first goal of the night. Three games before the end of the season, this could just make for a happy ending. The Marseille player agreed with that in the coloumns of the daily sports paper L'Equipe on the day of the Monaco-OM game : «Yes, it’s true tht my peformances are not of the same level as last year, he admits, but people have often said that I am not decisive enough and this qseason, paradoxically, I’ve scored a lot more goals and made a number of decisive passes.»

The stats don’t lie. Getting better as well when you note that Nasri played 37 matches during the 2006-07 season, and has only played 27 this season, this is because of a bad sprain suffered during the summer and contracting meningitis during the autumn. «He has scored a few goals » as he has the quality to do that » says his coach Eric Gerets but the Belgian is demanding and wants to see more. «He feels better when he is playing a little further down the field but I am convinced he can play in a 4-2-3-1 formation close to the centre forward. The problem is that he wants to touch the ball as often as possible. If he played higher up the field I think he could score between 8 and 10 goals per season.» The coach has his mind made up, even if Nasri scored again on Sunday playing in a conventional playmaker role. He becomes especially lethal around the box when he has a certain amount of liberty, and is not marked too closely. «Often, he wants to play too deeply next to de Modeste M’Bami. What needs to be done is to force the opponents to approch M’Bami so that somebody else can have the liberty to go forward , analyses Gerets, when the opponent is out of position and he has a minimum of space, that’s when he is dangerous.» A return to form which can only be good for OM in their quest for third place before, why not, getting on with the European Championships in the French national team.