Rennesvs.St Etienne

The Argentine manager replaced Julien Stephan during the international break, but lost his first game away to Lille last weekend.

Match preview

Not many would have predicted relegation-favourites St Etienne to be above Rennes with over one-third of the season played, but that is testament to how they have performed, and how underwhelming the hosts have been.

Rennes enter the weekend just one point and one place above the relegation zone, following the defeat in Sampaoli's first game in charge.

That extended their run of defeats without scoring to three matches, and you have to go back 17 years to find the last time the club lost four in a row without finding the net.

Sampaoli will therefore hope his team can rediscover the form Rennes showed against St Etienne before Les Verts were relegated three seasons ago, because the Red and Blacks were dominant in this fixture.

Five of the last six head-to-heads have gone in Rennes' favour, the same amount of wins they managed in the 20 meetings prior to that, and four of those victories were accompanied by a clean sheet.

As a former Rennes player, St Etienne boss Olivier Dall'Oglio has a woeful record against them as a manager, failing to win in any of his seven previous encounters.

The visitors do at least come into the game on the back of a very important win last weekend, beating bottom-of-the-table Montpellier in an early-season relegation six-pointer.

Those three points moved them out of the bottom three and up to 13th, above Rennes, and onto 13 points, with four wins already representing a very fine return for the newly-promoted side.

Only one of those 13 points have come away from home though, with St Etienne's problem clear for all to see.

Montpellier are the only team with a worse away record, and they are still on zero points, with Les Verts also owning the worst defensive stats on their travels, having conceded 20 in just six games on the road so far.

Despite now being over two-and-a-half years ago, their most recent results against Rennes make for a grim reading too, losing both games in their relegation season without scoring - conceding seven.

Rennes Ligue 1 form:

L

D

W

L

L

L

Saint-Etienne Ligue 1 form:

W

L

L

W

L

W

Team News

Sampaoli reverted to a 3-4-3 formation for his first game in charge last week, and that cost Jota and Ludovic Blas their places in the starting XI, dropping to the bench.

There was also bad news for defender Alidu Seidu, as he tore his ACL in the first half at the Pierre-Mauroy, and will now miss the rest of the season.

One positive is that left-back Adrien Truffert will return to the side after he served a one-match suspension in the Lille defeat after accumulating three yellow cards.

St Etienne's Augustine Boakye is a doubt with illness here and will be suspended next week due to yellow card accumulation, while Yvann Macon, Mickael Nade and Ben Old all remain sidelined with knee injuries.

The position up front is still up for grabs, with Ibrahim Sissoko the favourite to keep his place ahead of Ibrahima Wadji, who has recently returned from a setback.

Rennes possible starting lineup:

Mandanda; Hateboer, Ostigard, Faye; Assignon, Matusiwa, Kamara, Nadiga; Gronbaek, Kalimuendo, Gouiri

Saint-Etienne possible starting lineup:

Larsonneur; Appiah, Batubinsika, Abdelhamid, Petrot; Ekwah, Bouchouari, Mouton; Cafaro, Sissoko, Davitashvili

We say: Rennes 2-0 Saint-Etienne

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