Monaco 2-2 Auxerre: Ligue 1 Match Report

Monaco 2-2 Auxerre was two goals down at half-time and level by the end. The interval score was 0-2 to the visitors; Monaco won the second period 2-0. A recovery from two behind against a side in 16th reads as character, but it started from a position a seventh-placed home side had no business being in.

Monaco went in on 49 points from 29 matches with a goal difference of +7, a point behind Rennes in sixth and three behind Marseille, in the middle of a European chase that four or five clubs were still contesting. They had won four in a row before their previous match — 3-1 at PSG, 2-0 over Brest, 2-1 at Lyon, 2-1 against Marseille — and had then been beaten 1-4 at Paris FC. That defeat looked like an outlier until this afternoon suggested otherwise.

Auxerre were 16th on 24 with -14, five points below Nice and playing for survival. Their recent record was all stalemates: 0-0 with Strasbourg, 1-1 at Le Havre, 0-0 with Nantes, and a 3-0 over Brest as the exception. Monaco had won the reverse fixture 2-1 in September.

Monaco reached 50 points and kept the difference at +7, dropping two in a fixture their rivals for the European places would have taken all three from. With four rounds left and four clubs above or alongside them, a home draw against the side in 16th is the sort of result that decides which end of that group a team finishes in.

Auxerre moved to 25 with -14, a fourth draw in five matches and a point earned at a ground where they had every reason to expect nothing. It kept them four behind Nice with four to play — not progress, but not the ground lost that a defeat would have meant. For a team in their position, taking something from the fixtures nobody expects them to is the only route that exists.

Our pre-match call was Monaco Win at 1.45, and it failed in the most instructive way: the home side scored twice and still did not win. The case was a four-match winning run against a side who had drawn three of their previous five, and it ignored the 1-4 at Paris FC that had just interrupted that run. A team beaten by three goals in their previous match is not reliably a 1.45 shot, whatever the twenty-five-point gap says. The recovery from 0-2 was the closest we came to being paid, and a draw pays nothing. Verdict: lost