France: Ligue 2

 

Final round in Ligue 2 today and that normally means more goals and we spoke about this and the reasoning last season on this very day ......
 

The last round, especially when teams have little or nothing to play for, also usually means an increase in goalmouth action, with teams finally able to play without too much pressure and look to entertain, sending supporters off for the summer with positive memories of the beautiful game. Also , Spring has well and truly sprung and most games will be played in warm, summy conditions, which will further help the carefree end of season nature of the fixtures, where there is nothing at stake. Final round last season (12-13), if we take away the one match were both teams were looking to avoid defeat, averaged 3.56 goals and something similar looks likely tonight.
 

Last year saw five of the eight non competitive games go "over" and we can expect similar today, for the second year in a row the three teams that had already secured promotion avoided defeat and that is quite interesting as five were playing on the road, but they were "friendlies".
 

Team news is almost irrelevant in these fixtures, which always feels odd after spending much of the previous 37 rounds discussing the merits or otherwise of players who are sidelined, but for today we are mainly focused on the teams who should be looking to entertain.

 

Le Havre- Auxerre

I have spoken several times about the Jekyll and Hyde nature of Le Havre and how you are never quite sure what you will get from them, when things click and they are on their game, they can be, at this level, unplayable and I will long remember their performance in beating Troyes here earlier in the season. Only one team outside the top 3 has scored more home goals, but it is typical of them that they have failed to score in their last two starts, both against teams at the wrong end of the table, one who were already relegated. However, they will not want to end the season with back to back home defeats and we can expect them to try to end the campaign on a high and show the potential they have for next season, we did say the same 12 months ago, but this is a team who really ought to be putting in a big challenge for promotion in 2015-16. They will probably have to do that without Ligue 2 top scorer Mickael Le Bihan (pictured) who looks on his way in the summer, he will want to cement his place at the top of that list and say goodbye with a goal (or two) you would think, his agent will know that this is MLB's chance to seal a major contract, he has just turned 25 and scored as many goals this season as in the rest of his career combined and he is unlikely to ever be as valuable a commodity ( we are talking agents here !) as he is today.