Grenoble 0-1 Sochaux
Nantes 2-1 Auxerre
Lille 3-2 Nancy
Toulouse 0-0 Lyon
Lorient 1-1 Le Mans
PSG 0-0 Monaco
Marseille 4-0 Rennes
St Etienne 4-0 Valenciennes
Nice 0-0 Le Havre
Caen 0-1 Bordeaux
In the end it all became about Caen, at the top just as much at the bottom. Franck Dumas' side frustrated Bordeaux for long periods in a first half that remained goalless. That would have done for Laurent Blanc, especially as Marseille were similarly being held at home by Rennes. Within four minutes of the restart, Yoan Gouffran had put Les Girondins ahead while Marseille were going goal crazy in the Vélodrome. Bakari Koné and Mamadou Niang struck within minutes of one another to put Marseille two up and an unfortunate own goal from the keeper Nicolas Douchez made it three. Niang added a fourth, but it wouldn't matter anything unless Caen could score two and they piled forward in the second half, rattling Bordeaux on a number of occasions.
Caen needed to do it for themselves as well as St Etienne were in the process of thrashing Valenciennes at the Geoffroy-Guichard. 1-0 up at half time through Aruajo Ilan, Bafetimbi Gomis grabbed two after the break and Kevin Mirallas wrapped things up, but if Caen got ahead, they'd still be down. Steve Savidan will surely be highly sought after in the off-season and he didn't deserve to be on the losing side, but Caen just could not find a way through the Bordeaux defence where Souleymane Diawara was magnificent and, despite some late fisticuffs when Caen keeper Vincent Plante took exception to some Gregory Sertic time-wasting, the game rather fizzled out with the dawning realisation of the inevitable. Bordeaux are champions. Caen are down.
Joining Caen in Ligue 2 are Le Havre, who finished with a goalless draw down in Nice and a P45 for Frederic Hantz, and Nantes. Les Canaris were down barring a miracle, but won anyway, ending Auxerre's six-game winning run in the process. Ivan Klasnic - surely another one too good for Ligue 2 - put them ahead early only for Jeremy Berthod to pull them back. Mamadou Bagayoko grabbed a winner on the hour. Too little, far too late. Those three will be replaced by Ligue 2 champions Lens and promoted Montpellier and Boulogne.
Lyon were already safe in third - the final Champions League spot - and they were held by Toulouse at the Municipal despite John Mensah's first half dismissal. PSG also failed to muster a goal in a drab game against Monaco which left Toulouse to claim fourth and the Europa League place. PSG miss out as Lille beat Nancy to go ahead of the Parisians on goal difference and claim fifth and qualification for the Europa League as Bordeaux's league cup win opened up another spot. Robert Vittek and Adil Rami put Lille into an early 2-0 lead, but Nancy pegged them back through Abdeslam Ouaddou and Youssouf Hadji. Had it remained like that, PSG would have snatched fifth, but Nicolas Plestan came up with a winner 15 minutes from time. Ligue 2 Guingamp, French Cup winners, are the other qualifiers. That's just salt into the wound for outgoing PSG boss Paul Le Guen who could well be on his way to Monaco to replace the departing Ricardo.
Caen's result meant that Le Mans and Sochaux were safe whatever, but both picked up points. Sochaux won courtesy of a Mevlut Erding goal up in Grenoble while Le Mans drew 1-1 having led through Thorstein Helstad at Lorient, but Michael Ciani squared it up before the break.
The monopoly has finally been broken. The trophy leaves Stade Gerland for the first time since 2001 and into the Chaban-Delmas for the first time since 1999. Bordeaux failed to lose a single home game this season, which goes some way to explaining why they won it. Lyon were poor in front of their own fans, while Marseille lost four times at the Vélodrome. When Fernando Cavenaghi got injured, many wondered how they'd cope. Simple: other folk took up the burden, most notably Marouane Chamakh. Their ability to turn losing situations into wins was remarkable as well, especially a crazy game at the Stade Louis II. They were more consistent too. After losing heavily at Toulouse, they responded by winning nine on the reel while Marseille, PSG and Toulouse would all lose games after big wins. Their failure in Europe will have hurt, but this young side is growing, very much in the mould of it's creator Laurent Blanc who, despite Yoann Gourcuff's genius, is very much the star of this Ligue 1 season.
The Euroballs Ligue 1 team of the season, in the now traditional 4-3-3:
Hugo Lloris (Lyon); Mauro Cetto (Toulouse), Marc Planus (Bordeaux), Souleymane Diawara (Bordeaux), Taye Taiwo (Marseille); Stephane Sessegnon (PSG), Yoann Gourcuff (Bordeaux), Benoit Cheyrou (Marseille); Ireneusz Jelen (Auxerre), André-Pierre Gignac (Toulouse), Karim Benzema (Lyon).
Honourable mentions to: Cedric Carasso (Toulouse), Eden Hazard, Michel Bastos (both Lille), Ludo Giuly, Guillaume Hoarau (both PSG), Marouane Chamakh (Bordeaux) among others.
There's plenty of wheeling and dealing to be done in the off-season and we'll try to keep on top of it.
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