|
But there have been quite a number of French speakers down at Gawthorpe since the players reported back although of course two of them are Arthur Gnohere and Mo Camara but who are the others?
The Clarets Mad community have done some research and we believe that Marcel Mahouve, Fabrice Richard and Mickael Antoine-Curier could be three of the players currently involved in our pre-season training.
Marcel Mahouve is the most experienced of all, the 30 year-old Cameroon was involved in the 1998 World Cup Finals and is believed to have around 25 full caps for his country. Until a year ago he was playing top flight football in France for Montpellier but last season moved on to Clermont Foot.
Mahouve is a midfielder who clearly stamps his authority in that area of the pitch if his record of yellow and red cards is anything to go by. He is the only one of the three not to have played in the Football League.
Defender Fabrice Richard is the next and he is currently with Alès having previously played for lower league club Red Star 93. But Turf Moor will be no strange place for Richard who has twice played against the Clarets for Colchester United, both games resulting in Burnley wins.
He was in the Colchester side that we beat 3-1 in 1998/99 season having trailed 1-0. He was substituted late in the game with Lua Lua coming on. Lua Lua was then sent off and the Clarets stormed to victory.
The following season he was back with Colchester as we won comfortably 3-0 with Andy Payton scoring his first Burnley hat- trick. He made his last appearance for the Us in February 2000 before moving back to France.
Finally we have 20 year old striker Mickael Antoine-Curier who has spent his entire career in England. He joined Preston as an 18 year-old in the summer of 2001 but a year later moved on to sign for Paul Hart at Nottingham Forest.
He made the bench a couple of times last season for Forest in the Worthington Cup but had to move on loan to Brentford to make his league debut. He did that in March of this year and played a total of eleven league games for the Bees scoring three goals.
He returned to Forest at the end of the season but was released along with Jon-Olav Hjelde and Jack Lester.
So we believe these three have joined Edghill and Iqbal in pre-season training along with the full time players and it has been suggested that there are a couple more to come.