“Getting relegated to the Championship made me want to leave.”
You can accuse Jordan Veretout of many things, but keeping his cards close to his chest is not one of them.
Moving on loan from Aston Villa to Saint-Etienne for the 2016-17 season, the former Nantes star has opened up to quite a few members of the French press about his time at Aston Villa, but few have been as candid as his interview with France Football.
Dedicating three pages of their Tuesday edition to the Frenchman, the magazine were especially thorough when talking about his season in the Premier League.
He said: “He told me: ‘I know you well, I have faith in you, you need to show me on the pitch. If you’re good, you’ll play’. Therefore, I played and ended up best passer in the team. I had some good games. He spoke to us in English so that we progressed and not annoy the others. Between us, he spoke French.”
Even if Garde’s arrival brought confidence that things could be turned around at Aston Villa, everyone, including the players, soon realised it was ‘mission impossible’, and that wasn’t easy to live through.
He explained: “When you win, you go home with joie de vivre, but we lost so much that, at one point, we didn’t even feel it anymore. Losing became a habit”.
Then came the ‘bonus dispute’. 
Nantes were due a bonus when the player made 30 appearances. How many did Veretout make? 29.
He said: “They told me they didn’t do it on purpose, but when you are a sub, there’s only one midfielder on the bench, me, a midfielder on the pitch gets injured, and they bring on a forward, you can only question the decision.”
Why Saint-Etienne, though? “They were the best solution for me. I met the staff, the manager, and they told me they trusted me. They’ve been in the top 5 for five years and playing in Europe.”
You can’t really blame him, can you?
