Preview La ligue 1 2008/2009

Last season:
For the 7th time in a row Lyon took the French title. Very impressive in such a heavy league as the French ligue 1. But the gap is closing compared to the titles of 2 and 3 years ago. Will this be the last in the series? Bordeaux ended in a comfortable second place, 13 points before Marseille who took the ticket for the third qualifying round of the CL. Marseille had an impressive comeback when Eric Gerets took over but still the CL qualifying round ticket was a gift from Nancy, who lost during the last match day from Rennes.

On the bottom side of the table the third relegation place was also decided on the last match day. Due to a victory of Toulouse @ Valenciennes it was Lens, who joined Strasbourg and Metz to la ligue 2.

The favorites:
Lyon: Maybe only one real favorite and that is like always Olympic Lyon. 7 titles in a row. Wow. The only problem is that the odds for Lyon becoming again the French Champions are not good odds. For each euro invested you will get 1.60 in return.

The outsiders:
The bookies and also I see 2 outsides. Outsides is maybe a misplaced term and maybe they should belong to the list of favorites but due to the history and the 7 consecutive titles of Lyon there can be only 1 favorite.

Marseille: Juicy odds for Marseille if they take the title. The odd is 4.75. Very close to a good value bet. Their coach E. Gerets declared that he aim to take the title. He got the players he asked for, so he himself doesn't see any excuses if they don't.

Bordeaux: Runner up last year and in the season 2005/2006. Due to a bad start of Lyon and some ties of Lyon again at the end of the season the gap was only 4 points. I expect that they will loose to much points if due to the CL. The odds for Bordeaux taking the tittle is 6.50.

The one nominated for relegation:
There are 3 relegation places in the French competition and there are 2 teams who make a big chance of leaving Ligue 1 after only 1 season. And these are Grenoble and Le Havre.

The odds:

	Title	Place 1-3
Lyon	1.60	1.10
Marseille	4.75	1.65
Bordeaux	6.50	1.90
PSG	20.00	4.00
Saint Etienne	30.00	4.00

	Relegation
Grenoble	1.30
Le Havre	1.65
Caen	2.40

Good luck,
Dremeber