Monaco’s right flank turns a strong season into a struggling partnership

Before the numbers could become a verdict, the stakes were simple: AS Monaco needed the right flank to help turn a season of promise into something sturdier. Instead, with Andries Gilis and Merouane Mokrani together, the side have taken one win from 12 games. They have lost eight, drawn three and scored 1.2 goals a game while conceding 2.5.

Without one of the pair, Monaco’s 32 games tell a different story: 19 wins, five draws and eight defeats. Their scoring rises to 2.3 a game and their concessions fall to 1.0.

Those figures do not identify which player’s absence matters, or explain why the combination has struggled. They do make it hard to argue that the right flank has been a dependable source of balance.

That is the concern as the season continues, rather than a verdict on either player in isolation. Gilis, delighted at Monaco, and Mokrani, a long-serving club professional, are hardly short of personal reasons to want the arrangement to work. Yet football has its own unsentimental arithmetic. Together, they have been part of 12 games and only one victory; apart, Monaco have won 19 of 32.

For a club still carrying the sting of Thursday’s Europa League exit to Plymouth Argyle, the split offers no tidy explanation and no instant repair. It does offer a conspicuous pattern: Monaco have looked far more effective when this particular partnership is not in place. The figures have made their point without raising their voices.