2021/22				Overall									Home						Away
				P	W	D	L	F	A	Gdf	Pts	Form	P	W	D	L	F	A	P	W	D	L	F	A
	1		Toulouse	38	23	10	5	82	33	+49	79	LWLW	19	14	4	1	52	14	19	9	6	4	30	19
	2		AC Ajaccio	38	22	9	7	39	19	+20	75	WXWO	19	13	3	3	21	8	19	9	6	4	18	11
	3		Auxerre	38	21	11	6	61	39	+22	74	WWWX	19	11	4	4	33	19	19	10	7	2	28	20
	4	1	Paris FC	38	20	10	8	54	35	+19	70	WWXL	19	11	7	1	30	13	19	9	3	7	24	22
	5	1	Sochaux	38	19	11	8	47	34	+13	68	XLWW	19	10	6	3	22	14	19	9	5	5	25	20
	6		Guingamp	38	15	13	10	52	48	+4	58	WWWX	19	9	6	4	31	24	19	6	7	6	21	24
	7	2	Caen	38	13	11	14	51	42	+9	50	LWLX	19	9	3	7	30	18	19	4	8	7	21	24

 

This is a one leg playoff game between Paris FC who finished 4th and 5th placed Sochaux, the winner will travel to play Auxerre who finished 3rd in another one off game on Friday, so no time for either to relax with the regular season having ended Saturday !

 

The top five were head and shoulders above the rest of Ligue 2 this season, and even Sochaux were 18 points clear of the team in 7th, the gap was 10 to Guingamp who performed very strongly at the end of the campaign, but were never in playoff contention.

 

It always seems a little crazy to me that you spend (in this case) 38 games and almost 10 months to make the postseason and three days after you do, it could be all over ! 

 

It feels like there should be a week to regroup, take a day or two off and get ready to go again.

 

The schedule is tough for Sochaux, they have to travel the 500km to Paris (and back) from Montbeliard to play PFC who have lost just once at home and the reward if they win is another fairly lengthy road trip to Auxerre a couple of days later. 

 

PFC are old hands at this, they finished 4th in 18/19 and drew 1-1 with Lens (losing on pens) and 5th last season, losing 2-0 at Grenoble, but will be hoping to make it third time lucky !

 

Since the switch from three teams automatically promoted there have been eight of these quarter final and semi final games and they have played out 4-2-2 which is about what we would expect, but it is a tiny sample size and I think we can just take the games on their merit. Both won their h2h home game this season, Sochaux 2-0 early in the campaign and PFC 3-1 in a game where they trailed at the break, but scored three in 7 minutes halfway through the second half. I don't think that either result means much, as for each game the home side was in season best form and the visitor in a bit of a blip.

 

The one big advantage that PFC have is with head coach Thierry Laurey, who is looking to make it a hat-trick of promotions in his last three seasons at this level, taking Gazelec and Strasbourg up and has a very good handle on how Ligue 2 works .His counterpart Omar Daf has been at Sochaux for 8 of the last 10 years as a coach, since late 2018 in charge, which is a long time nowadays and they almost always play his favoured 4-2-3-1, under him they have finished 16-14-7-5 and will surely see this as continued improvement, up two places and 17 points on what was already their best finish since being relegated into Ligue 2 seven years ago. In the last four full seasons ( 19/20 was cut short) PFC have finished 8-4-5-4 and Laurey was supposed to have been the last piece to get them over the line, he came up 5 points short, but with a total which would have been top 2 in pretty much any other season and one they would have taken pre season, so hard to be too critical. They are unbeaten in 17 starts at home ( all comps) along with 10 clean sheets and in that sequence have beaten Sochaux 3-1, Ajaccio 2-0 and drawn 2-2 with Toulouse, so 2+ goals in games versus top 5 opposition, in fact, they have lost just 2/33 on home soil so this is a tall order for Sochaux. Strong home side and PFC also look to have more about them offensively , Sochaux won nine road games, but most were to bottom half of the table teams , or sides struggling for form and they lost all four away to top 5 opposition and only scored twice on the road to top 5 teams last season and that feels like something that needs to be addressed.