Re: French Soccer League Predictions and Discussion Thread (Ligue 1)
After a horrible performance in the Uefa Europa League which leads to Nice exiting the tournament early this season without achieving even a single win in the group stage, Nice are looking to be playing much better in the French Ligue 1 and it seems that the club is putting all of its effort to try and finish this season with a top 4 finish on the table. Nice will be playing against Saint Etienne in their next upcoming match and even though they will be playing as the away team but I think Nice should be able to beat Saint Etienne at the end of the match.
Nice did perform very badly in the UEFA Europa League competition, even Nice was unable to achieve a single win in the qualifying round, so they were only able to finish in 35th position and had to be eliminated early. This is very bad and clearly shows Nice's inability to compete at a higher level. In fact, if we talk about performance in the domestic league, Nice performed quite well and even better than Lyon this season, but the difference is that Lyon was able to divide its focus well, more experienced in competing at a higher level, so that Lyon was able to penetrate the last 16 of the UEL.
And at this time the match between Nice VS Saint Etienne is taking place, the match has entered the 67th minute and for the time being the score is 2-1 with Nice's advantage. And although in this match Nice did not dominate the course of the match, they were able to create more attacks and attempts to continue to press Saint Etienne's defense. So there is still a possibility for Nice to be able to increase its advantage.
What I like about Franck Haise's team is that in every match, even though they don't dominate the game, they are able to build more attacks. Like in this match, where even though Saint Etienne dominated the game with more than 60% possession, Nice with only 37% possession, they were able to maximize it well and even in that match Nice was able to launch at least 16 attempts with 9 shots on target and 3 goals scored.
And with the achievement of 3 points in this match, Nice is catching up with Marseille so that currently the points between Nice and Marseille have both collected 46 points. Although it is indeed very unfortunate that Nice's good performance cannot be brought to a higher level, when playing at a higher level they actually perform badly. However, it seems that this does not only apply to Nice, it also applies to big teams like AS Monaco who failed in the UCL and so does PSG who have not been able to win the Champions League title so far.