Ligue 1 week ending 26th September 2010
France looks across
La Mer for football inspiration
by Chris Stanley
It’s a cliché, but football thrives on them, so why
not start with one? If you can’t beat them, join them. Like most clichés, it
doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. What happens if the best way of joining
them is by beating them? I don’t know, but Saint-Etienne certainly do after the
weekend closed with them perched on top of Ligue 1 for the second week in a
row.
Last week, Saint-Etienne coach Christophe Galtier was
quick to dampen any chances of his side getting carried away with their stellar
start, preferring instead to put his side’s 3-0 romp over Montpellier down as
nothing more than three points towards safety. But he has no such chance this
week, not after his side pulled off their first away victory at Lyon in
seventeen years to dump their bitterest rivals into the relegation quicksand
and retake top spot from Rennes.
There is a parallel to this result, and it happened
last weekend at the City of Manchester Stadium. There, the nouveaux riche
Chelsea were beaten by the nouveaux richer Manchester City to lob in their
stake as genuine title contenders. City are themselves cast in the same mould
as ASSE: last excellent in the 1970’s, they’ve watched in frustration while
their near neighbours got on with winning pots aplenty. They’ve suffered
humiliating relegations and have had the monopoly on long-suffering, fanatical
fandom. The two cities are probably twinned. But like it as not, both teams
came away with one-goal victories which have made both sets of fans start to
believe yet again.
Saint-Etienne’s win over Lyon at the Stade Gerland was
a triumph of attrition rather than inspiration. Lyon dominated the majority of
the play, having shots from Jeremy Toulalan and Jimmy Briand cleared off the
line, a Bafetimbi Gomis header make a dent in the post and further shots from
Toulalan and Briand beating the keeper but not the woodwork. Gomis saw a goal
chalked off for offside before, wouldn’t you know it, Saint-Etienne got the
winner after a rare foray into Lyon territory.
The winner came courtesy of Dimitri Payet, current top
scorer in Ligue 1 and the man who would be the next big thing, had he not
already stopped being that a couple of years ago. He’s in sensational form, and
it’s no surprise it was he who stepped up to take the free kick from thirty
yards after Dejan Lovren’s inexplicably-punished tackle. The man with the
golden boot smacked the ball past Hugo Lloris and gave Lyon’s fans an unwelcome
present – turning them green with envy to match their hated rival’s colours.
Continuing with the theme of Premier League
inspiration, we have to sink to the lowest depths of the league and
Arles-Avignon. They don’t have even a passing resemblance to Everton, being as
they are a tiny speck in the football firmament with a ground made chiefly of
Subbuteo furniture, but they share one thing: neither of them can buy a win.
This weekend the whipping boys played a lot better than their 3-1 defeat at
Montpellier suggested, but sooner or later they’ll have to admit the
inevitable: start winning or get relegated.
For Liverpool, read Auxerre. Both managed 2-2 draws on
Saturday but where the Reds got a helping hand from the ref, Auxerre should
have needed no such assistance. It took them sixty seconds to take the lead at
home to Nancy when Dennis Oliech powered his way through the defence and buried
the ball, and ten minutes later the same player did the same thing to give them
a two goal cushion. But Auxerre are more brittle than a block of cinder toffee,
and before half-time they’d allowed Nancy to help themselves to two goals, which
came as no help for Auxerre as they geared up to face Real Madrid in midweek.
The current champions Marseille are sailing up the
table (there’s no parallel I’m afraid; Chelsea are doing me no favours by being
superb) and it was the wind that carried them to sixth as they showed their
dominance over surprise-package Sochaux. They took the lead thanks to a
superb/lucky cross-cum-shot by Taye Taiwo from the dead-ball line that floated
over Mathieu Dreyer. The rest of the game was much of a muchness, with
Marseille scoring again through Lucho Gonzalez and then conceding late on.
Like England, the early Ligue 1 is becoming stodgy in
the middle. After some early goalfests, this weekend saw some faintly dull wins
and little incident. The action came at the extremes of the table, and with no
result to match the euphoria of Saint-Etienne’s win, we’re left to pick over
what excitement there was.
Lens are still waiting to add to their solitary win
after a horrorshow against PSG. The Parisians took the lead through comedy
means when a nothing cross was cleared against Yohan Demont which looped up
over his keeper into the roof of the net. Right on the final whistle, Nene
chipped Vedran Runje from the left hand side of the area to send PSG back to
the capital in fifth place.
Rennes put their League Cup exit to Guingamp behind
them to win 2-1 away in pretty Nice, which was pretty nice. Brest lucked out
against Valenciennes, coming away with a 1-0 despite conceding a penalty which
was retaken and subsequently missed. Toulouse sleepwalked through a dull 1-1 at
home to Lille (both goals coming at the same end and looking identical),
Lorient giving themselves a scare by gifting Monaco an equaliser before going
on to win 2-1, and Bordeaux are still trying to find third gear and could only
manage a 0-0 away at Caen.
So not a lot to learn this week, other than clichés
don’t always ring true. They say it’s easy to get to the top but the real
problem is staying there. Saint-Etienne don’t seem to be having too much
trouble doing either.
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