In arguably the pick of this weekend’s fixtures in the French top flight, 2nd placed Lille will play host to 6th placed Lyon in Sunday’s Ligue 1 clash at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy with both teams keen to further their ambitions of claiming a possible league title.
At the time of writing, Lille are due to entertain Scottish champions, Celtic, in the Europa League on Thursday evening but on the domestic front, Sunday’s hosts still remain unbeaten in this new Ligue 1 campaign, winning five and drawing three of their eight matches played to date this term.
Victories gained over Reims, Metz, Nantes, Strasbourg and Lens have helped lift Lille into early contention for a long-awaited Ligue 1 title along with points gained in draws with Marseille and Nice who are also in the pack of early front-runners in Ligue 1, sitting in 4th and 5th place respectively.
Cautious observers would point out that Lille have had a fairly favourable opening schedule of fixtures so far this season in Ligue 1 and this upcoming clash against Lyon will perhaps be their biggest test yet this season.
Onto Lyon then, and the visitors have also made a solid start to this new French top flight season as they’ve suffered just one defeat out of their first eight matches of this new term, which came in the shape of a 2-1 defeat away from home at Montpellier earlier in the season.
Since that early setback, Lyon have really tightened up and steadied the ship by posting a subsequent five-match unbeaten run which consists of three draws and two wins which has helped lift them up into 6th place and one point adrift of the top five.
Stalemates with Nimes, Lorient and Marseille meant that Lyon still added to their points tally and gave them a firm base upon which to register recent back-to-back wins against Strasbourg 3-2 away from home before their impressive 4-1 dismantling of Monaco on home turf at their Groupama Stadium last weekend.
Incidentally, Lyon have become something of the ‘draw specialists’ in Ligue 1 so far this season as they’ve been involved in no fewer than four draws within their eight matches overall, and the prospects of another draw this Sunday also look favourable.
Four of the previous six meetings between these two teams have ended in stalemate.