France international Peguy Luyindula will be relieved to be seeing out the bulk of the 2005-06 season at a relatively big club in Auxerre, but unfortunately he has also joined an even bigger club – that of exciting players who became overnight flops at Marseille.

Aside from a bright period in early 2005, in which he earned himself a recall to the national set-up, the 26-year-old struggled with form and confidence during his solitary year at the Stade Vélodrome.

He still finished as the club's top scorer with 10 strikes, but he endured a fractious relationship with Coach-turned-sporting-director Jose Anigo and never managed to fill the boots of departed crowd-favourite Didier Drogba. Ironically, however, the man who first turned out for the France Under-21 side while playing in Ligue 2 with Niort is a very different player to the Chelsea striker.

Despite scoring 16 goals in his last season with Lyon, before joining Marseille for around £8m in 2004, Congolese-born Luyindula has never been an out-and-out goal-getter. Preferring to drop off and create spaces for a target man, Luyindula is more of a creator. After netting eight goals in 27 Ligue 2 games for Niort, the forward moved to top-flight Strasbourg in 1998. He helped the club win the Coupe de France in 2000, before moving to Lyon as the Alsace side suffered relegation to Ligue 2.

Auxerre boss Jacques Santini jumped at the chance to take him on loan in the summer of 2005 as a replacement for Bonaventure Kalou, and Luyindula will be relishing the opportunity to team up with the man who handed him his France debut against Belgium in February 2004.

Forced out of Marseille by the arrivals of Mamadou Niang and Andres Mendoza, the sometimes over-sensitive striker could not resist a few parting shots at Anigo before packing his bags.