2016-2017 Season 1/4 Review
As you can see below, we had a pretty solid pre-season, beating Hanover 4-1 and Barcelona 2-0, both on the road and then hammering some crappy teams. Dropped the friendly against Bayern and then suffered a disappointing blowout loss to PSG in the Champions Trophy match. Still, the preseason was very useful in getting the squad cohesion and tactics pulled together in hopes of hitting the ground running in Ligue1. I think having less squad turnover certainly helped compared to last season's rough start.
Ligue 1 performance was... strange. On the plus side, SR and Mr. Manager are still undefeated in Ligue 1 play, despite having a pretty tough early schedule with road matches against Lille, Lyon, and a home game against Marseille. The downside is they couldn't seem to find that winning edge and ended up with 6 draws from the first 10 ligue 1 games. The draws against Lille and Lyon probably should have both been losses, but we managed to limp passed lille because they couldn't finish despite vastly out shooting us, and rescuing the Lyon game with a late equalizer. On the flip side, we couldn't manage to hold leads against several weaker opponents. This included a draw to Havre, who were really struggling and a heartbreaking home draw against Nice on a late equalizer. Fortunately, we seemed to find a bit of spark and finished out with 2 ligue 1 wins. The game against Lorient looked like another case where we just couldn't quite get the win when they equalized on a slop goal and made it 1-1. Mr. Manager brought on Wijnaldum#1 as a late sub and he managed to save the win with a hero goal in the 85 minute. We've also been unlucky with the zebras so far @
Reel. We've had 3 penalties given against us and 0 for us in ligue 1 play.
In the Champions league, things really couldn't be going better. Two games played, two solid wins, and a +4 Goal difference. I figured we'd get the home win against Kyiv, as that should have been the easiest match in all of group play, but I definitely couldn't have expected a 2 goal win in an away game against Juventus. That could really make the difference we need to advance for the first time.
Ligue 1 Record - 4 wins, 6 draws, 0 losses
Chamions League Record - 2 wins
French Champions Cup - 1 Loss
Overall 1st Quarter Record - 6 wins, 6 draws, 1 loss
Ligue 1 standings:
SR is in a familiar 4th place spot that they spent most of last season in. They are the only undefeated team in ligue 1, but those 6 draws also drop a lot of points. Especially frustrating is the fact that two of the draws came against teams at the very bottom of the table. The good news is that SR are only 2 points off from the league leaders PSG and have a very solid +8 GD. It is hard to really expect a better quarter than we just had, but hopefully even if we have some losses in the next quarter we'll pick up more points by not drawing against teams we should beat.
Players I'm pleased with:
Cheick Diarra - Picked up right where he left off at the end of last season. 7 starts and 8 goals, including a key goal against Juventus.
Paul-Georges Ntep - Played in 7 games before being injured for the past 3 weeks. He scored 3 goals, had 2 assists, was player of the match twice, and currently leads Ligue 1 with the highest average match rating.
Danilo Pereira - Had a solid first quarter capped by a tremendous 2 goal performance against Juventus and he also has an 82% pass completion rate. Defensively he's also dominated with 8 key headers and 3.86 tackles/game
Uros Spajic - slid right in to Abdoulaye's spot and had a great first quarter of the season with a very nice 7.1 average match rating, a goal, and 16 key defensive headers
Cheick M'Bengue - The usual defensive stalwart on the team, averages an incredible 8.67 tackles per game and leads the team in key tackles with 9. Also picked up a couple of assists.
Kevin Papin - Had the best first quarter of the youngins, despite missing the whole preseason and early first quarter on international duty and with a slight injury. Hasn't started a game yet and has only played as a substitute, but I've really appreciated his 87% pass rate and very low number of mistakes as well as the goal and assist he picked up. He should be a nice defensive playmaker in the future.
Propper - I feel like I'm praising half the team, but Propper was also great with 2 goals and 2 assists in 7 starts and he leads the team in key passes with 9. The team definitely feels far less capable on the offensive end when he isn't on the field
Players I'm disappointed with:
Batshuayi - 6 starts and only 1 goal and 1 assist. His lack of scoring directly contributed to so many of the draws against lesser opponents. I feel like he gets as many chances to score as Diarra and only finishes a fraction of them.
Joel Veltman - Played poorly in his first 4 starts before getting injured
Benoit Costil - Has just looked sloppy at times and has spilled too many balls and fumbled around leading to several more goals that shouldn't have been.
Joseph Gezaw - I've put him on as a late substitute in several games when I had really tired CBs and he was at fault for a couple goals that tied games up and was also at fault for Juventus' one goal. His marking on corners is horrible.
For those of you who are interested in such things, Bayern Munich won the Champions League, PSG won the French Cup, and Lyon won the Euro Cup.
