Olympique Lyonnais vs Caen 19/05/19

19 May 2019

Olympique Lyonnais and Caen will face-off at the Groupama Stadium in contrasting circumstances. While the visitors fight tooth and nail to preserve their Ligue 1 status, the hosts seem to be on the verge of securing the top-three finish.

After a 2-1 away loss to Nantes at the beginning of April, the hosts have gone from strength to strength, pulling off three wins in four L1 outings ever since (W3, D1). Notably, Les Gones have netted 2+ match goals across all four of those meetings, keeping a clean sheet once though. Also, Lyon boast a promising L1 home record in 2019 (W5, D2, L1), with seven of their eight L1 home outings since the turn of the year featuring over 2.5 goals. Moreover, all eight of those games have seen both teams scoring, with Bruno Génésio’s players bagging 2+ match goals on six occasions. Only PSG have scored more goals than Lyon (63), with Les Gones netting over 1.5 match goals in 21 of 36 league fixtures this term.

Currently level with AS Monaco in terms of points, the visitors come into this meeting after racking up a four-game unbeaten league run (W3, D1). Importantly for them, SMC have kept three clean sheets in that span, with two of those three triumphs ending with the same 1-0 scoreline. A run of good form can encourage Fabien Mercadal’s men to try to snap a five-game losing run against Lyon in competitive away H2Hs, and post their first away win here since 2012. Caen’s recent road games have been short of entertainment though, with all of their previous four L1 away fixtures featuring under 2.5 goals, while none of them saw both teams to score. Mercadal’s main worry ahead of this game could be that his players have bagged one goal or less on all eight of their L1 road trips since the turn of the year, with just five teams scoring fewer away goals than Caen (13) this term.