1st Team

OM 2-0 Toulouse: OM on a winning streak

Posted by
Frédéric Rostain
On Sunday 24 September 2017 at 10:40

You don't change a winning team. For the visit of Toulouse, Rudi Garcia made just one change to the starting eleven that won at Amiens: Mandanda got his place in goal back after Pelé's faultless deputising. As for the rest, it was simply copy and paste stuff.
Right from the start the Olympiens showed they wanted to take the game to Toulouse. Carefully but deliberately, they closed in on the Toulouse goal. One move followed another, and as things progressed the moves began to turn into chances. Njie, Payet, Thauvin, Ocampos and also Rolando, with a header from a corner, all tried to find the breakthrough. Playing with speed, fluidity and perfectly coordinated movements, OM increasingly threatened Lafont's goal. This ended up paying dividends with a move – a slightly confused one – that finished with a pass from Ocampos to Thauvin, who, from point blank range, had no difficulty scoring.

Trailing on the scoresheet, Pascal Dupraz's men decided, after the break, to venture forward a bit more than they had in the first half. But very quickly, and after one or two threats to Mandanda's goal, the Olympiens got themselves organised again and increased the deficit from a corner that came from a chance that should have ended up in the back of the net. But no matter, however, because from the corner the ball ended up at Ocampos. Largely unmarked, the Argentinian pushed the ball into the back of the net with his thigh.
The Orange Vélodrome could finally breath a sigh of relief. Ahead by two goals, OM were safe. Mandanda kept out a point blank shot from Cahuzac at one point. Then finally, towards the end of the game, the pace slowed, though the substitutes who'd been brought on, Germain and Sarr (and later Sari, making his L1 debut), did try to find a way through to Toulouse's goal a third time. But the final chances, which fell to Thauvin and Germain, came to nothing.

OM have strung together three wins in a row in all competitions, without conceding a single goal, and have now climbed to fifth in the table, just two points behind the top three.