Stade Rennais vs FC Lorient Preview 07/08/2022

Stade Rennais vs FC Lorient – 07/08/2022

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The opening weekend of the new French Ligue 1 season continues on Sunday afternoon with Rennes taking on Lorient at Roazhon Park as the hosts seek to emulate last season’s successful 4th place finish in the domestic top flight.

That 4th place finish saw Rennes achieve a place in this season’s Europa League but having finished just five points behind the runners-up, Marseille, and the accompanying spot in the Champions League, Rennes will be setting their sights on a qualification  berth in that competition or better, this time around.

Rennes perhaps couldn’t have wished for a more favourable start to this new season as they welcome last season’s strugglers, Lorient, who ended last term sitting fifth from bottom in the Ligue 1 standings and suffered a 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Rennes towards the end of the last campaign.

New signings, defender Theate and goalkeeper, Mandanda, are expected to further shore up a Rennes defensive unit which possessed the second best defensive record at home last season, shipping just 13 goals while as a team, Rennes won eight of their last nine home games.

Defender Omari is ruled out with a hernia while midfielder Gboho is rated as doubtful.

Onto Lorient and the visitors are expected to be gearing themselves up for another tough battle in the lower half of Ligue 1 this season following last season’s relegation battle which they came out on top against, finishing fifth from bottom and four points clear of the relegation play-off spot.

However, an opening day of the season trip to Rennes probably wasn’t at the top of their wish list prior to the season’s fixtures being released, especially after being thrashed 5-0 by their upcoming hosts at the end of April last season.

Lorient finished the last campaign by failing to win any of their last five league games though, suffering losses to Rennes, Reims and Marseille, although they did pick up points in draws with Bordeaux and Troyes.

It was the visitors’ poor form on the road though which really did the damage as Lorient managed to pick up just two wins on their travels throughout the whole season whilst slipping to 11 defeats and this does not bode well for Sunday’s trip.

Lorient manager, Regis Le Bris has no injury worries but his side have lost five of the previous six meetings against Rennes and may well be fearing the worst ahead of this encounter.