Quelle Surprise…

By: Inara | September 29th, 2007

Lyon once again prove to be Lens’ undoing. I actually feel quite sorry for Lens because they are a good team, but for some reason, they can’t find a solution against Lyon. On the bright side of things, Lyon are finally sitting at the top of the table, exactly where they’re supposed to be (they are tied with Nancy, who have a game in hand).

The 3-0 scoreline was completely fair, though the game took a while to gain momentum. The first half hour could have gone either way, with Lens being dangerous on the counterattack and having more shots on target. But near the end of the first half, Milan Baros sent Fabio Santos a pretty ball, and the oft-neglected midfielder finally opened his account with Lyon with a very nice goal.

In the second half, Lyon began dominating heavily and pressed Lens everywhere, and with Lens running out of energy, it was obvious that Lyon would score again. At the 81st minute, Kim Kallstrom blasted a rocket into the back of the net from 25 yards away. And finally, Karim Benzema, not wanting to be left out, rounded off the night with a goal at the 90th minute.

The goals:

Fabio Santos 42′ 1-0

Kim Kallstrom 81′ 2-0

Karim Benzema 90′ 3-0

Player performances:

Perrin opted to utilize a significant level of player rotation and turnover. He’s still trying to find the best tactics, because unlike Houllier, who just reused Le Guen’s formula and most of his old players, Perrin is pretty much starting from scratch and is determined to maximize a player’s potential. Sometimes it backfires (Barcelona), but sometimes it works out very well (Peace Cup, Metz).

Vercoutre
Clerc - Squillaci - Bodmer - Grosso
Santos - Toulalan - Juninho
Keita - Baros - Kallstrom

Since I didn’t watch the game, I can’t say too much about player performances besides what I gleaned from match commentary. First of all, Fabio Santos proved today that he deserves to play. He hasn’t had any L1 time at all this year, and last year, he played in only a handful of matches after being bought during the January transfer window.

Juninho had a quiet match and was subbed out for Benzema, who just scored his ninth L1 goal. Kader Keita is showing a lot of improvement, and Jeremy Toulalan dominated as usual. He protected the Squillaci-Bodmer duo all match. As for Kallstrom, it took him a while to get used to playing as a LW, but once he settled, he did well.

Analysis:

Well, it’s clear that Perrin was already thinking ahead to Tuesday’s Champions League match against Rangers. He chose to conserve the two players who get tired out the most (Juninho, Sidney Govou, and Karim Benzema), made sure that Hatem Ben Arfa - who wasn’t even on the bench for today’s match - got a full 90 minutes with the reserves, started Francois Clerc as opposed to Anthony Reveillere, and also lessened the defensive burden on Jeremy Toulalan by having four midfielders on the pitch today.

Alain Perrin says:

“It’s a confidence boost for Tuesday, which will be another tough game. More and more, I feel this is a team who enjoy playing together. We avoided injury and I was able to give playing time to some fringe players. It’s a good evening for us.”