Stade Rennais is a bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde this season. Tails, the Reds and Blacks enjoy at home, with the second best record in Ligue 1 on their lawn (9 wins, 1 draw, 3 losses). On the face side, they lose too many points away from home, with the 14th record only out of their bases (3 wins, 3 draws, 6 losses). Traveling to Montpellier this Friday, they will have to prove the statistics wrong.
Black Series Outdoors
Stade Rennais has not been victorious in its last five trips: four consecutive defeats in Ligue 1 (Monaco, Lens, Clermont and Paris) and the pitiful elimination in Nancy in early January in the Coupe de France. How to explain this big gap between home and away results? Full-back Birger Meling’s response: “It’s a bit normal, because here at Roazhon Park we always have our supporters with us. With the atmosphere here, we are so strong… It’s our stadium, our home, we’re always good here. Then we need to find a key to do the same outside.“
The public, or rather its absence outside, is a reason also put forward by Bruno Genesio, who admits to looking for an explanation with the two faces of Rennes: “There can be several explanations. What I see is that we often led the score away and we got caught. We can think that it is perhaps the mental aspect with the public, the pressure, even if lately there was not much public. Are we too playful? On the contrary, are we being too cautious? It is difficult to explain. But in any case the figures speak for the last four games and the course we have outside. We will have to remedy that if we want to be at the end of the season in our objectives.“
Inconclusive goalkeepers, lack of efficiency in both surfaces
The Rennes steamroller at Roazhon Park does not export well, that’s a fact. Unlike other teams, such as Nice and Nantes in particular, Rennes cannot, or too little, count this season on a goalkeeper capable of helping them to maintain a score this season. As the specialized media Coparena points out, with an “average” goalkeeper in terms of his performance, Rennes would be 4th in Ligue 1, two points from 2nd place.
But Ligue 1 is not won on the stats, and Bruno Genesio also highlights a more general lack of efficiency outside: “I saw this stat, after that it’s always difficult what represents a point won by the goalkeeper or not. We also had a lot of attacking situations that we didn’t convert to kill the match: at Troyes, at Monaco, at Bordeaux… It’s a set of things. What is certain is that we must be more efficient on both surfaces, that’s for sure. We lack efficiency, and more outside than at home.“
The Rennes coach also expects his team to be capable, when they are in difficulty, of obtaining a draw away from their bases: “It does not prevent us from sleeping, but we know that we must be more regular Sometimes even a point, away, plus a point, plus a point… We realize that we would be very happy to have taken them from Lens, Paris, Clermont, Monaco.” Indeed, this season, Rennes is the team which obtains the fewest draws in Ligue 1 (4 draws in 25 days), tied with Nice … and Montpellier, its opponent this Friday.