If there is one team that has gone relatively unnoticed in European football so far this season then Lille OSC fits the bill.
After league and cup double winner Rudi Garcia left the club at the end of last season, Rene Girard’s men have certainly caused a few raised eyebrows with their surprising success so far this season.
Lille, for those who don’t know, are second of Ligue 1, one point ahead of billionaire-funded Monaco and only four points behind billionaire-funded Paris Saint Germain with a third of the season already done and dusted. It is Lille’s success that has been quite monumental so far as they remain ahead of Monaco following a 2-0 win over them last week.
Their success appears to be even more surprising when Rudi Garcia left the club to manage Roma at the end of last season. Garcia lead Lille to a league and cup double in the 2010-11 season with the likes of Eden Hazard and Yohann Cabaye in the club’s ranks.
Lille has also lost a significant amount of talent left over from last season too. They have lost two key youngsters in attacking midfielder Florian Thauvin and left back Lucas Digne to Marseille and PSG respectively for around £13 million each. Thauvin scored ten goals in thirty-two appearances for Bastia— the club that Lille loaned him out to. Nineteen-year old Digne was an integral part for Lille last season gaining 33 appearances at left back. If both players were not shipped out of Lille then no doubt they would play an integral part of Lille’s season.
With all that being said, Lille at second place does sound really surprising doesn’t it? Well, that really should not be the case.
Lille OSC’s board has made a great appointment to replace the fantastic Rudi Garcia with Rene Girard. He managed Montpellier for the previous five seasons before taking over the managerial role at Lille. Within those five seasons he managed to guide Montpellier to the Ligue 1 championship in the 2011-12 season beating the newly taken over PSG by three points. He would also manage Montpellier in the Champions League for the first time in their history. Undoubtedly it is Girard’s experience of guiding the most inexperienced of teams to such great heights is what Lille looked at when acquiring his talents.
Girard’s appointment might be an inspired decision but it’s not the only one the Lille staff would make. The signing of centre back Simon Kjaer from Wolfsburg for only £2.2 million was pretty good business. Kjaer’s signing has helped Lille to become the best defence in France’s top tier with only four goals conceded in thirteen games. With Montenegrin Marko Basa partnering him at the back and with a vastly underrated goalkeeper in Victor Enyeama who has just kept his eighth clean sheet in a row, no wonder Lille are second place at the moment.
However, things could be better when it comes to their attack as they have only scored 15 goals in Ligue 1. On the other hand that tally will eventually improve with Nolan Roux leading the club’s scoring charts with five. That’s not bad considering his tally would have been better if he was not out for the first five games of the season.
The only thing that discounts Roux from being a great striker in Ligue 1 in the moment is consistency and once he hits that, Lille should be a more dangerous team than they already are. Same chain of thought goes to Ivorian centre forward Salomon Kalou who should be doing better than a goal every four games.
Moreover, and more embarrassingly, for Lille, is that not one player has over two assists to their name; Marvin Martin and Florent Balmont leading the assist charts with two. If they are able to create more chances for key players like Roux and Kalou then maybe the team will see less 0-0 draws like against Guingamp last Saturday.
So, what does the future hold for Lille OSC? Will they stay in the top three? Will they be title contenders toward the latter part of the season?
The answer is probably for top three and probably not for title contenders. If Girard was allowed to invest some more money into attacking and midfield talents then maybe they can give PSG and Monaco a bit of a challenge. They have profited from the last transfer market around £37 million therefore they can afford to spend a bit of that money.
The biggest challenge Lille will face is if their defence’s form decline which is in an inevitability considering they don’t have the talent to keep that form up. Therefore it is a necessity that they invest in better attacking talent and some depth in defence when the January transfer market opens up.
For now, if I were to predict the Ligue 1 table at the end of the season, I would say that Lille will finish third, some distance behind both PSG and Monaco. They could have challenges from either Marseille or Nantes, but I see them overcoming the challenges from those teams.
Yet if there is anything that history tells us about French football, it’s that nothing should be discounted… as Lille’s manager Girard proved with Montpellier…
Thanks for reading! You can follow me on twitter –@BrodSutherland. Give the site a follow while you’re at it – @LastWordOnSport. Don’t forget to take a quick moment and like our Facebook Page!
Feel free to discuss this and other footy related articles with thousands of fans at r/football.
Interested in writing for LastWordOnSports? Find more info at our “Join Our Team” page.