If Rennes has been on fire offensively since the start of the season, the Auvergne volcano has been asleep for a very long time. The performances of the attacks of the two teams which face each other this Sunday (3 p.m.) at the Gabriel-Montpied stadium are poles apart.
Rennes laughing, Clermont crying
With its attacking duo Martin Terrier / Gaëtan Laborde, already authors of 20 goals to two this season in Ligue 1, as much as Clermont Foot on the exercise, Stade Rennes regales in front and is in 3rd place in the ranking of attacks, with 40 goals. Only Strasbourg (41 goals) and Paris (42 goals) are ahead of the Rouge et Noir.
A statistic that delights Bruno Genesio: “When we have different scorers… We have two players with 10 goals! There are 17 games left, in general when you have two scorers between 15 and 20 goals at the end of the season, you are not far off. But then you need a solid defense. It’s always the same, if you score 80 goals but take 100, you’re not on the podium.“On this side there too it is fine, thank you, since Rennes has the 4th best defense in Ligue 1 with 19 goals conceded.
On the Clermont side, the attacking picture is much less encouraging: with their 20 goals scored this season, the Auvergnats are 17th in the attack rankings. Worse, the Clermontois have scored no goals in their four games played since the beginning of January 2022. The absence of their center-forward Mohamed Bayo, who left to play the CAN with Guinea, is felt: Bayo is involved in 11 (9 goals, 2 assists) of the 20 Clermont goals since the start of the season.
Rennes fills the cards, but remains too often without reaction
If the Rennais are so prolific, they owe it largely to four cards inflicted on opponents this season: 6-0 against Clermont and Bordeaux, 5-0 at Saint-Etienne and 4-1 against Lyon. Rennes have scored more than half of their league goals in those four games alone.
But on closer inspection, a surprising statistic in this 2021/2022 exercise for Rennes. Of their 10 victories, Bruno Genesio’s men have only conceded one goal (against Lyon, editor’s note). Which proves that he must remain solid to win, but above all that they almost never win when they concede a goal.
A statistic noticed by Bruno Genesio: “It means that we lack a little bit of character, but that’s normal I would say. We don’t talk about it a lot, but we play with a very, very young team. The average age of our defense at the moment is 20 if we take the four defenders and the goalkeeper. So on the contrary, doing what we do with very young players is very encouraging and very rewarding. It’s true that we may lack a bit of character, of the soul of a leader when we are led to roll up our sleeves, start again and not lower our heads. We work on that, in training, where we put ourselves in situations of failure or inferiority that can happen again in a match.“
The Rennes coach relies on the youth of his group. This will still be the case in Clermont this Sunday, since the average age of the 20 Rennais who travel to Auvergne is only 21.9 years old. A bottle class that looks good.