Avoiding the Drop

If you take yourself back a year ago at this time, you might remember that pretty much every major league in Europe had their title basically settled. Germany was a tight race till the last day, but everyone else was pretty well settled a month or two before it all ended. Things are different though this season. Every week the race in England changes direction, Real Madrid and Barcelona will essentially have a La Liga title game on April 11th, and there’s a newly promoted side tied for 1st in France.

Over the next week or two, we’ll take a look at each of these leagues one by one and see who’s still in the race for the title. First up is France’s Ligue 1. Tables are accurate as of March 11th.

Key Matches
March 13th- Montpellier v Auxerre
March 21st- Bordeaux v Lille
March 21st- Marseille v Lyon
March 28th- Lille v Montpellier
April 10th- Lyon v Lille
April 17th- Bordeaux v Lyon
May 2nd- Auxerre v Marseille
May 2nd- Montpellier v Lyon
May 5th- Lyon v  Auxerre
May 8th- Lille v Marseille

First off I must point out that 10 matches featuring the top 6 teams in the league seems huge. This is of course the first league I’m looking at in this series, so the rest of the leagues might be even  crazier than that, but that’s a pretty impressive set of matches. Sadly it looks as though Ligue 1 isn’t on TV in the states for the time being, so most of this will get un-noticed by the American audience.

Former juggernaut Lyon has the toughest time of it as they feature in 5 of these matches, this also means  they can sort of control their own destiny. If they can gain maximum points in every one of these matches the road to the title shouldn’t be too hard to conquer, even if they drop some points in their other matches. They do have the Champions League quarter-finals to concern themselves with though, so that will surely weigh on some of their squad decisions.

Reigning champions Bordeaux have a pretty easy stretch run over remainder of the season, facing only two of the top 6 twice and playing quite a few relegation battlers along the way.  They have however had a bit of  a struggle lately, picking up just 5 points in their last 5 matches. They too have the Champions League to worry about as well, with the second leg of their tie against Fiorentina happening at midweek. I highly doubt that Bordeaux or Lyon think they can win the tournament, but they both probably want to go as far as they can as the money they can earn from the Champions League would be a significant boost for any French team.

Sitting directly behind Bordeaux is Montpellier, you’re forgiven if the name doesn’t sound familiar as this is their first season in Ligue 1 since the 1980′s. Montpellier. This has been a long time coming though, as they’ve built a lot of their squad up from their youth system and peppered in a few veterans to strengthen the squad. They’re proving that building up with youth can work in top tier leagues, these guys are familiar with each other and have a certain rhythm on the pitch together. Ten of their 16 wins have come by only a single goal, which could very well mean that they’ve been getting a little lucky, and that luck might fade in the stretch run.

Since the start of the new year, AJ Auxerre have been on a solid run of form, other than a 5-0 beatdown by bottom dwellers Grenoble, they’ve won eight of their ten matches in 2010. This run has been immensely helped by Polish striker Ireneusz Jelen, who’s found the back of the net 5 times in his last 6 matches. They’re no strangers to good finishes either as they’ve finished in the top 10 seven of the last eight years.

Finally we round things out with the two highest scoring teams in Ligue 1, Lille and Marseille. Mamadou Niang has been on fire this season for Marseille, scoring 15 times. Meanwhile Pierre-Alain Frau of Lille has found his goal scoring form that he hasn’t had since 2004, and he’s joined by young Ivorian Gervinho in his goal scoring prowess. Both of these squads present a threat in the title run, as they can score at almost any time. Each have only failed to score four times this season.

If I have to pick a team to win the league though, I’m going to go with Lyon getting back on top of the league after a year without the crown. They’ve probably still got the best team in France, and a lot of the players know what it takes to win the league. As I said they also play everyone else in the top 6, and if they can pick off a good number of wins out of there, they could be sitting is a very good position.  If I had to pick a dark horse though, I’d go with Marseille. I thought they’d do it last season at about this time and they seem like a strong enough team this year to pull it off. I really don’t think they can get it done though.