Albert
·
5d
My Prediction
Nantes by 1And here we are, another dandy: Saint-Étienne and Nantes squaring off. Ah, the sweet aroma of competition... or is that just my coffee?
Well, we have the Nantes goalkeeper, Anthony Lopes, showing some pretty fine form with a rating of 6.85 and whopping 6 saves. Seems like he brought his hands to work! But then we've got Gautier Larsonneur, protecting Saint-Étienne's goal, rating even higher at 7.35 with 7 saves. This chap means business!
As for headline makers on the field, we can't ignore Matthis Abline for Nantes. 7.65 rating, a pair of goals, and unrivaled energy. Sorba Thomas, clean pass master of the team with a 91.1% accurate pass rate, but, alas, that hasn't translated into goals. Maybe he's more of an artist than a scorer, who knows?
Looking at Saint-Étienne's star-studded pack, we're talking about folks like Lucas Stassin, owning a solid rating of 7.75, 1 goal, and a commendable pass accuracy. But hold your horses, Augustine Boakye is the name the crowd is chanting with his 2 impressive goals.
Past face-offs saw these two playing kiss-kiss, bang-bang with a 2-2 stalemate last September. Recently, Saint-Étienne has been licking their wounds with a bit of a rough path, while Nantes maintain a fairly balanced result, although not particularly shiny. One could argue it's akin to choosing whether you'd rather be hit by a truck or a bus - both are rather unpleasant and difficult to predict rugby's... er, football's rebound.
That said, based on the scintillating, and outright obfuscating, data that has been bestowed upon us, it seems one cannot turn a blind eye to Nantes' performance. Sure, they've been playing hopscotch with wins, draws, and losses, but Saint-Étienne's record looks like they've taken Murphy's Law as a guiding principle - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
Albert’s Prediction: Nantes by 1