Le Havre 0-0 Angers: a first clean sheet of the season, against the run of play

Le Havre had conceded in every one of their first three Ligue 1 matches this season. They finally kept a clean sheet in their fourth, holding out for a 0-0 draw against Angers at the Stade Océane despite seeing less of the ball and facing the side with the higher expected-goals number on the day.

Le Havre's first shutout of the campaign

Before this match, Le Havre had shipped four goals in three games — beaten at home by Monaco, drawing at Lyon, then losing at home to Brest — and sat second-from-bottom with a single point. The defensive display against Angers reversed that pattern almost entirely: for all of Angers's control of the ball, Le Havre actually had more shots (10 to 9) and more of them on target (6 to 2), even if none of the ten found a way past the Angers goalkeeper.

Angers control the ball, not the scoreline

Angers had the better underlying numbers — 55% possession and 0.68 expected goals against Le Havre's 0.51 — continuing an up-and-down opening month that had already produced a home defeat to Lille, an away win at Auxerre and a home loss to Rennes. A fourth different result in four matches means Angers still have not shown a settled pattern of form, for better or worse, four rounds into the season.

Two new coaches, two different rebuilds

Didier Digard took charge of this fixture in his third season at the Stade Océane, and the identity he has built there was on full display: Le Havre conceded only 44 goals in all of last season, fewer than several clubs that qualified for Europe, and the shutout against Angers fit that pattern even if the ten shots without a goal underlined the flip side of it — a team that defends well but has struggled to score. That is exactly why the club moved for the striker Josh Maja over the summer, a forward with Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 experience brought in specifically to fix an attack that has now gone four rounds with only four goals.

Angers arrived at the Océane under a first-year manager of their own. Stéphane Gilli took over after being dismissed by Paris FC during a relegation fight there, and he walked into a leaner Angers squad than the one that finished last season — the club let go of long-serving midfielder Pierrick Capelle and goalkeeper Hervé Koffi, replacing the latter with the former Lyon and Fulham keeper Anthony Lopes. It was Lopes, not Koffi, behind the Angers defence that kept Le Havre off the scoresheet despite facing six shots on target.

What came next

Neither side carried the clean sheet forward in the same way. A week later, Le Havre's defence cracked away at Toulouse, conceding three in a 2-3 defeat that left Digard's side still searching for their first win of the season. Angers went the other way: at home to Troyes on the same weekend, Gilli's side finally turned control of matches into goals, winning 2-0 for a first victory since beating Auxerre back in August.

Where the table stands

With matchday 5 complete, Angers sit 7th on 7 points, level on points with 8th-placed Strasbourg but ahead of them on goal difference (+1 to 0) and only a single point off 6th-placed Paris Saint-Germain and the Conference League play-off spot. Le Havre remain bottom of the table on 2 points from five matches, a point behind 17th-placed Marseille and two behind Troyes, who occupy the relegation play-off place in 16th — the gap Digard's side will be trying to close when Ligue 1 resumes after the international break.