While Clermont Foot turned a lot of heads last season in Ligue 1, with a spirited campaign that saw them avoid relegation in their first season back in the top-flight it, it would still be fair to say that they were not the seasons biggest surprise as RC Lens impressed on their way to a seventh-place finish.
Lens have long been recognised as having one of the most passionate sets of fans in French football but simply assuming that they rode a wave of fervent support to a strong league finish would be to do them a disservice. Lens have a reputation as a very good developer of talent. They have a strong and fruitful academy system but alongside that, they have also recruited and strengthened their squad intelligently to supplement that.
We have seen that already this season following the sale of the 22-year-old midfielder Cheick Doucoure to Crystal Palace for a fee reported to be in the region of £20.34M as the club have reinvested intelligently. The signings of the young Belgian forward Lois Openda for £8M from Club Brugge and the 22-year-old Ghanaian midfielder Salis Abdul Samed for £4.5M from Clermont Foot have brought a sense of quality and urgency to the club.
Going into the match last weekend away to Monaco, we have seen Lens start relatively well with an opening day win at home to Brest and then a 0-0 draw at home to Ajaccio. With that said, however, not many people would have seen this result coming as Lens comfortably outclassed a youthful and expensively assembled Monaco side to win the match 4-1.
We will look closely at the way that Lens have been constructed with an emphasis on the way that they progress the ball and play in to dangerous areas and the way that they manage to control the game in central areas. These were the key tactical factors that saw Lens comfortably outclass the more favoured opposition in this match.
This tactical analysis piece will be an analysis of the tactics used by both sides, focusing particularly on how Lens trounced Philippe Clements men at the weekend.
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In this match we saw Lens line up as expected in a 3-4-3 system although the two players who were nominally playing as wide forwards, David Costa and Florian Sotoca, very much positioned themselves centrally in order to support Openda and find spaces around the double pivot at the base of the Monaco midfield. We saw Abdul Samed taking the place that was vacated by the sale of Doucoure as the Ghanaian midfielder held the centre of the pitch and allowed Seko Fofana to drive forward in possession of the ball.
Make no mistake this was a talented Monaco side with new signings Breel Embolo and Takumi Minamino playing as advanced midfielders behind the prolific and dangerous Wissam Ben Yedder.
