Recent times have been turbulent and often painful for fans of Olympique Lyonniase, but the pain is easing, and hopefully good times will soon be around the corner.
A 3-2 win away to Toulouse on Friday lifted Les Gones to within eight points of a European place, and that is some going after they spent much of the first half of the season in the relegation places. Now Lyon are in the top half of the Ligue 1 table, and they showed they can scrap as well as play flowing football in their victory over Toulouse.
Lyon fans over the age of 25 will remember the team which won seven consecutive Ligue 1 titles in the 2000s, between 2002 and 2008, and since then they have watched Paris Saint-Germain take over. Teams like Olympique Marseilles, Monaco, and Nice have hovered around the top table, but Lyon have reason to be proud of their relatively recent history.
For a club with such high expectations, a top-ten place is not much to shout about, but, believe me, it means a lot to Lyon fans right now. When manager Pierre Sage took over 12 games ago, OL were at the at the bottom of the table, and he has won nine of his 12 games in charge.
It’s been some transformation, and much of Sage’s success can be put down to the fighting spirit of his players, shown in abundance on Friday as Irish defender Jake O’Brien scored a late winner in Toulouse.
Former Arsenal striker Alexandre Lacazette was back in action after injury, and he opened the scoring with his tenth goal in ten league games, while the highly rated Ryan Cherki was also on the score sheet.
The win opened up a five-point gap between OL and Toulouse in the 11th, and now Les Gones can kick on. Lyon fans finally have something to be cheerful about, and they deserve it.
Three more for Mbappe
Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe is back on goal after helping himself to a hat-trick during the champions’ 6-2 destruction of Montpellier. The PSG talisman has agreed to join Madrid in the summer, though the paperwork has not yet been completed, and he has recently spent a couple of games on the bench after he confirmed he was off.
But Mbappe started on the trip to Montpellier and ripped the hosts defence apart in a clinical display. This SBOTOP writer found this result particularly interesting as his beloved Burnley currently has Montpellier centre-back Maxime Esteve on loan!
Vitinha opened the scoring, and Mbappe made it 2-0 from a tight angle. The hosts rallied and levelled through Arnaud Nordin and Teji Savanier, but any hope the home fans had of their team pulling off a shock ended when Mbappe nudged PSG ahead again after 50 minutes. That opened the floodgates, and he soon scored his third before Lee Kang-in and Nuno Mendes finished the rout.
Mbappe now has 24 league goals for the campaign, and PSG have moved on to 59 points, 12 ahead of Brest, the surprise package in second place, and the Ligue 1 2024 betting odds have pretty much closed the book on another Paris title.
OGC Nice register a vital victory
In other Ligue 1 2024 news, Nice earned their first win since January to keep their top four hopes on track. One point from the last four games piled the pressure on head coach Francesco Farioli as his team slipped badly off the pace.
By the end of the first half of the campaign, Nice had emerged as the main challengers to PSG, but now they are scrapping for a Champions League spot, and the 3-1 win over Lens helped them leapfrog their opponents into fifth place and level on points with fourth-placed Lille.
The Nice squad travelled to Belgium, close to Lens, in preparation, and that did the trick as Farioli’s men stormed into a 3-0 lead. Terem Moffi tapped home the first after good work from Mohamed Ali-Cho, and then Khephren Thuram doubled the lead with his first goal of the campaign. Moffi scored his second and Nice’s third before Eyle Wahi scored a late consolation for RC Lens.
Lille picked up a 1-1 draw away to Brest on Sunday to take fourth place, but Nice are right back in the hunt now, and next up they have a home game against struggling Nantes, who have lost the last three to leave them precariously placed in 16th.
And a shout out to bottom club Clermont Foot, who kept their hopes of survival alive with a long-awaited 2-1 win over Le Havre; the win took them to within five points of safety and still gave them a fair chance of securing top flight football.
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