The early top two leading clubs in this season’s Ligue 1 will go head-to-head at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard as Saint-Etienne play host to Rennes with a precious three points up for grabs for both teams as they look to build upon their impressive starts to this new domestic top flight season.
Saint-Etienne sit top of Ligue 1 thanks to a slightly better goal difference over their visitors as the home side have made a promising start, winning three of their first four matches to date with victories over Lorient, Strasbourg and Marseille - the latter being a solid 2-0 win away from home.
Last weekend, Saint-Etienne earned a point on the road with a 2-2 draw away at Nantes but they return to the more familiar surroundings of their Stade Geoffroy-Guichard for this upcoming clash against Rennes.
This encouraging start to the season is in stark contrast to the way that Saint-Etienne ended their last campaign as the hosts failed to win any of their final seven matches of last term and indeed, managed to pick up just one win from their final 12 matches of the season.
It was a stellar season for Saturday’s visitors, Rennes, last term as they finished in 3rd place and earned themselves a place in this season’s Champions League.
While on the domestic front, they too have made a promising start to this new Ligue 1 campaign.
An opening day 1-1 draw away from home at Lille has been followed by three straight league wins over Montpellier 2-1 at home, Nimes 4-2 away from home and last weekend’s 2-1 home win against Monaco which has lifted them to joint-top of Ligue 1 ahead of this weekend’s action.
In addition to their three wins on the trot at the end of last season’s campaign, this means that Rennes are unbeaten in their last seven matches, winning six of these while on the road they’ve lost just twice in their last seven games, which incidentally have all resulted in under 2.5 goals.
Four of the previous eight meetings between these two teams have ended in draws and Saturday may see another stalemate unfold at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard as they may cancel each other out.