The dabbling AS Monaco is allowed to take on Friday evening in house against PhD student Nîmes Olympique. Does the national champion of the season 2016-2017 know the full loot again or do visitors know how to stumble again?
AS Monaco:
In the 2016-2017 season, AS Monaco still scored 30 victories in competition, so this season only one of the five games was won. From the last four games, only two points were taken, including the tip of last week against Toulouse. As is often the case in this early season, the Monegasks turned out to be mainly offensive: from the twelve goals, only two ended up between the posts and one behind the goalkeeper. An impressive pimp of the Belgian Youri Tielemans ended up behind the goalkeeper through the bar, making Tielemans now joint scorer of AS Monaco, together with Radamel Falcao, an attacker pur sang. With ten minutes remaining on the clock, Toulouse was still at the same level, which meant that Monaco did not win for the fourteenth time in the last sixteen league matches in Toulouse.
Tuesday started for the Monegasken the adventure in the Champions League with a home match against Atlético Madrid. Both teams have started very difficult this season in the league: five points after five games for AS Monaco and the same number of points for Atlético Madrid after four games. Samuel Grandsir took the Monegasken early in the lead, but even before the break, Atlético Madrid had already reversed this deficit in a lead, reaching the final score before half-time (1-2). In the second half the Monegasken managed to turn on, but the equalizer did not work. Just like Toulouse, there was an interesting statistic about the number of shots, the number of shots on target and the number of goals. Twelve shots fired against Toulouse, two of them on goal, one of which resulted in a goal. Against Atlético there were nine shots, one of which was on goal, which also resulted in a goal.
Nimes:
After two victories and two defeats, Nîmes Olympique last week the first draw of this season booked. In a goal-rich match against Girondins de Bordeaux with a total of no less than 29 shots, Nîmes was already behind within half an hour, before leading 1-2 at halftime. Fifteen minutes later, the situation was completely reversed when Bordeaux led 3-2, then the final agreement was for Umut Bozok, who with his first goal in Ligue 1 put his team at 3-3 to bring in a run. By another goal-rich game for Nîmes there are only two teams that have scored more than Nîmes this season: Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique Marseille, the numbers one and two of the ranking. There is also only one team that more often scored goals than Nîmes: the scoreless En Avant Guingamp.
The maker of the 3-3, as said before, was the Turk Umut Bozok. With a red card for Teji Savanier (in connection with a disturbance with Kylian Mbappé), the Turk finally got another chance in the basics to find his first goal in the Ligue 1. After 78 minutes it was finally that far, making Bozok now the first Turkish goal scorer for Nîmes is in Ligue 1. In his last ten games, the Turk only scored twice (0.2 goals per game) while Bozok managed to score eight times in the seven games before (1.14 goals per game ). Savanier is still suspended, so chances are that Bozok starts again in the base. Does he know how to live up to his coach’s confidence, or does he continue to struggle with his form?
PREDICTION: Both teams to score / YES @ 1.57
