The French top flight action continues on Sunday with newcomers, Auxerre, taking on Angers at the Stade de l'Abbé Deschamps, with the hosts playing their first home game in Ligue for over 10 years.
Auxerre finally achieved promotion back up to the French top flight at the end of last season when they overcame former Ligue 1 side, Saint Etienne, on penalties in the relegation/promotion play-off final after the scores were level at 2-2 on aggregate.
🎬 Retour sur la première séance d’entraînement de la journée. C’était ce matin à la Baumette ! pic.twitter.com/uyjK4tfECK— Angers SCO (@AngersSCO) August 10, 2022
🎬 Retour sur la première séance d’entraînement de la journée. C’était ce matin à la Baumette ! pic.twitter.com/uyjK4tfECK
However, the euphoria of achieving promotion back up to the promised land was short-lived after being on the receiving end of a heavy 4-1 defeat away from home at Lille in last weekend’s season opener, and although they now return to home soil for this Sunday’s clash with Angers, early pressure appears to be on the hosts already.
Although Angers aren’t considered as being amongst the heavyweights of this division, Auxerre have struggled against their upcoming visitors as the hosts have failed to beat them in each of the previous six meetings.
Auxerre will be without defender, Pellenard, who has a knee injury.
Angers finished in the bottom half of Ligue 1 at the end of the last Ligue 1 campaign, sitting in 14th place but in truth, the visitors were never really in any danger of relegation as they possessed a useful nine-point buffer over third from bottom club, Saint Etienne.
However, Angers certainly didn’t do themselves any favours as the visitors had collected just one win from a sequence of 14 games in the domestic top flight from the end of January through to the start of May which shows how bad the bottom three teams’ form must have been!
Victories over Bordeaux and Montpellier in 4-1 and 2-0 wins, both of which were on home soil at their Stade Raymond-Kopa, helped steady the ship although there are still concerns over Angers’ results and form away from home.
Angers have failed to win any of their last 10 outings on the road and indeed, the bigger picture shows the visitors have managed to muster just one away win from their last 18 away games overall, nine of which also ended in draws.
Forwards, Eneme-Ella and Sima are both missing through injuries but neither of them featured in Angers’ opening game with Nantes which resulted in a 0-0 draw.
Both Auxerre and Angers may therefore be happy to settle for a point apiece here.