Philippe Montanier at Lens 2019/20 – tactical analysis

Northern France side Lens recently tasted the fruits of their hard work by getting a promotion to Ligue 1 after an impressive season in the second tier of French football. Though their roads were a bit bumpy in 2020, they successfully maintained the runners-up spot and gained automatic promotion after the season is ended early. Head coach Philippe Montanier, however, was sacked in late February after winning only once from seven matches from fixture 20 to 26. It was a pretty harsh decision considering the former manager did a large part of the work to bring Lens up the table this season and the team played brilliantly in the first half of the season.

Though harsh, the decision taken by the board was immediately justified with reserves manager Franck Haise being appointed caretaker manager until the end of the season after Montaniers dismissal and led Lens to two decisive wins in his first two games. The two wins brought Lens back up to second place before the season was suspended and eventually announced to be ended prematurely.

Haise, however, only made a small tactical adjustment when he took over but its quite clear that Montaniers tactics and philosophy were still on display during his time at Lens this season.

In this tactical analysis, well take a better look at Montaniers tactics and philosophy during his time at Lens this season in Ligue 2.

Formations

The 2019/20 season saw Montanier changing his formation preference. From favouring a back-four in a 4-2-3-1 (as well as its 4-4-1-1 and 4-4-2 variants), this season Montanier mainly preferred to use back-three formations. In the image above you can see that Montanier liked to start his team in a 3-4-3 formation which may be tweaked a little bit into a 5-4-1, 3-4-2-1, or 3-4-1-2 mid-game. Back-four formations were scarcely seen this season with Montanier using it only in the early stages in the season before then switching to a back-three formation.

Despite the change of formation preferences, Montaniers tactics and philosophy both in and out of possession as well as in transitions are still pretty similar to last season with the team still playing high intensity and high tempo football this season.

Lens are quite dynamic this seas