‘We won’t be signing any big names.’ Speaking in a long interview with Nice-Matin on Thursday, Jean-Pierre Rivère quashed speculation that club owners INEOS would be spending big this summer.

"Our objective is to recruit players who will be part of the project over several years, elements that will help us grow and be in the top 5 on a regular basis," he said. "A Dolberg, in the past, we would have sold him this year or next year. Now we want to keep our best players." Among them, the African champion Youcef Atal: "We want to keep him, and we're going to keep him."

The era of gambling on the likes of Balotelli, Ben Arfa, Sneijder... is over: "This is no longer our project. At the time, we had less resources. We were trying to make deal with players who could perhaps bounce back with us. We had a lot of success. Today, the project is different."

The same applies to "big salaries" out of the contract. Le Gym's president cut short journalists from the daily newspaper when they cited the examples of the PSG's Cavani and Thiago Silva: "You know our budget? Thiago Silva earns 1.2 million euros per month at PSG. Where is the interest for our project to invest in him? It would be throwing the money away at the expense of the rest of the team. Our budget is nothing like Paris Saint-Germain's. To invest so much would be putting everything on a single player."

It’s a similar story for loans as well which may have, in the past, attracted players out of reach for a permanent transfer such as Carlos Eduardo, Ricardo, or Belhanda: "We did that a lot, with buy-out options that we knew we couldn't exercise. Last summer, for example, we bought Nsoki. We are now in a position to stop going for untenable options, without over-spending all the same."

Today, the club is naturally more attractive. But also for agents wishing to 'place their players': "I have a safeguard for that: his name is Julien Fournier. There are a lot of players who want to come here. But we're looking for character, a particular mentality. We'll be more careful than before on that point. And we don't have the best salaries here. We have to be extremely vigilant, not to overpay." In addition to character, experience also comes into play: "That may be one of the things that needs to be corrected. We know that a player like Dante has helped players to grow and progress immensely." 

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