Van den Boomen inside five minutes, and Angers win 3-1 at Auxerre despite a busy night for Lopes
Branco van den Boomen scored early, Harouna Djibirin and Amine El Ouazzani late. Auxerre put eight shots on target and beat Anthony Lopes only once, through Rémy Labeau Lascary, and lost 3-1 at home.
Angers lost their opener 2-0 at home to Lille. Their second game brought the first points of the season, and three goals on the road: 3-1 at Auxerre.
Branco van den Boomen opened the scoring at 5'. Rémy Labeau Lascary levelled for Auxerre at 35'. Then Harouna Djibirin at 70' and Amine El Ouazzani at 78' settled it late.
Lopes kept the margin
Auxerre had eight shots on target and Anthony Lopes, the former Lyon goalkeeper, stopped all but one of them. Angers were sharper: an expected-goals figure of 1.74 to Auxerre's 1.29, and three goals from six efforts on target.
Auxerre have now lost both games and conceded eight — 5-2 at Lens on the opening weekend, 1-3 at home here.
Auxerre's losing start, then a turnaround
This defeat turned out to be the middle game of a three-match losing streak that opened Will Still's first season in charge at Auxerre: the 5-2 defeat at Lens, this 1-3 loss at home to Angers, then 1-3 at Lyon in matchday 3, which left Auxerre bottom of the table without a point. Still found an answer from there — a 1-0 win over Nice in matchday 4 ended the run, and by matchday 5 Auxerre had beaten Brest 2-1 as well, back-to-back wins for the first time all season. Five matchdays in, Auxerre sit 10th on 6 points from 2 wins and 3 losses, with 7 goals scored and 12 conceded.
Angers built on this win
For Angers, this 3-1 win at Auxerre was the launchpad after an opening 0-2 home defeat to Lille. It did not turn into an immediate run of form — matchday 3 brought a 1-2 home loss to Rennes, who scored twice inside seventeen minutes — but a 0-0 draw at Le Havre in matchday 4 kept Angers unbeaten in two, and a 2-0 win over Troyes in matchday 5, through Pierrick Peter and Ahmed Sbaï, made it back-to-back clean sheets heading into the international break. Angers are 7th on 7 points from 2 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses, with 6 scored and 5 conceded for a goal difference of +1. Stéphane Gilli, back in charge at the Stade Raymond-Kopa for a second spell after first taking over in March 2023, could not prevent an eventual relegation that time but led Angers straight back up to Ligue 1 the following year — the kind of fiery reputation the club brought back for this rebuild.
Match facts
- 5' — Branco van den Boomen (Angers)
- 35' — Rémy Labeau Lascary (Auxerre)
- 70' — Harouna Djibirin (Angers)
- 78' — Amine El Ouazzani (Angers)
| Stat | Auxerre | Angers |
|---|---|---|
| Shots on target | 8 | 6 |
| Expected goals (xG) | 1.29 | 1.74 |
What's next
In a Ligue 1 table that still showed only matchday 1 when this match was played, both clubs sat in the bottom four without a point — Angers 15th, Auxerre 17th. Angers were off the mark now. On the weekend of 5-6 September, Auxerre visited Lyon and Angers hosted Rennes. Five matchdays into the season and heading into the international break, the table looks very different from that snapshot: Angers have climbed to 7th on 7 points, within a point of Paris Saint-Germain and the Conference League play-off spot, while Auxerre have fought back from bottom of the table to 10th on 6 points, level on wins with several sides above them despite a goal difference of -5 — the second-worst in the division, behind only Troyes.
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