The relegation battle in Ligue 1 this season will be the tightest in years

Ten clubs have won Ligue 1 since 1996. Seven of them have also been relegated in the same period. Despite the dominance of Lyon and PSG, French football has remained fiendishly competitive on the whole, often catching bigger clubs out – joint-record champions Saint-Étienne and 2009 winners Bordeaux were both relegated last season. With four clubs going down from an evenly matched division, this season’s battle could be the tightest in the league’s history.

As many as 12 teams will be fighting for survival this season. Losing Bordeaux and Saint-Étienne – who have both played Europa League football in the last three seasons – has intensified the tussle by ridding the league of two clubs who were usually capable of extricating themselves from the bottom half.

That battle is further tightened as the league reduces to 18 clubs, meaning four will go down automatically this season – from the previous situation where the bottom two clubs went down and a third went into a relegation playoff. If four teams had been relegated in recent seasons, two title winners would have ended up in Ligue 2. Monaco finished fourth bottom in 2019, just two years after winning Ligue 1. And Lille finished fourth bottom in 2018, just three years before they won the title.

After the promotion of Auxerre, Ajaccio and Toulouse – three clubs with strong histories in the top flight – the bottom half of Ligue 1 is full of evenly matched teams all simply hoping to survive. That competitiveness was underlined this weekend as the division’s bottom two clubs won. Eight games in, just four points separate the bottom nine.

Bottom side Ajaccio mustered their first win away at Brest. Surprise promotion chasers last season under long-serving coach Olivier