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  • Sunday 24 May 2009

    Advantage Bordeaux: Ligue 1 reviews

    Valenciennes 2-1 PSG
    Sochaux 2-1 Nantes
    Lyon 3-1 Caen
    Nancy 1-2 Marseille
    Bordeaux 1-0 Monaco
    Rennes 3-1 Lorient
    Le Havre 0-1 Lille
    Nice 0-2 Toulouse
    Auxerre 1-0 St Etienne
    Le Mans 1-1 Grenoble

    With one round of fixtures remaining, it's advantage Bordeaux in Ligue 1. Their win at home to Monaco, courtesy of Marouane Chamakh's free header, leaves them three points clear at the top and they face lowly Caen in the final round of fixtures. Monaco finished with ten men with Lukman Haruna sent off late on. Marseille also won to give them hope of overhauling Laurent Blanc's side, but they have the tougher assignment next week, at home to Rennes. Laurent Bonnart and Brandao gave them a two goal lead at Nancy for whom Landry N'Guemo got a late consolation. Just one goal separates Marseille and Bordeaux in terms of their goal difference, so Marseille need to beat Rennes by two and hope Caen can pull off an unlikely victory.

    The Normandy side might just need that unlikely win in order to stay alive in Ligue 1. They remain out of the relegation zone on goal difference alone after their 3-1 defeat in Lyon. Juninho's first half penalty put Les Gones ahead and Sidney Govou made it two after the break. Sambou Yatabaré pulled one back, but Karim Benzema wrapped it up late on. St Etienne are the ones level on points with Caen, but 14 goals worse off. They went down in Auxerre to yet another Ireneusz Jelen winner as Les Verts got caught in possession deep in their own half. Nantes are down. Three points off the two sides immediately above them, they're six goals worse off than St Etienne and 16 worse than Caen. They lost to Sochaux who pull themselves to within a point of safety. Mevlut Erding and Rabiu Afolabi put Sochaux ahead and held on despite Mamadou Bagayoko's second half penalty. Le Mans remain in trouble despite snatching a point at home to Grenoble through Anthony Le Tallec after Paulo André's own goal put the Alpine club ahead.

    Toulouse move back into fourth and the Europa League place with a 2-0 win at Nice, André-Pierre Gignac getting his 23rd and 24th goals of the season. They leapfrog PSG on goal difference who went down to Valenciennes despite leading through Mateja Kezman early on. Two quickfire goals in the second half from Johan Audel and Gregory Pujol snatched the points. Rennes won the local derby 3-1 against Lorient to remain just two points behind Toulouse as do Lille, 1-0 winners over already-relegated Le Havre, Michel Bastos with the only goal of the game.

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