Brest take 26 shots and ten corners at Le Mans, and still go home with one point

Possession finished 50-50, which is the one number from this game that tells you nothing at all. Brest had 26 shots to Le Mans' eight and ten corners to one. They drew.

Romain Del Castillo put the visitors ahead at 31'. Dame Guèye levelled in first-half stoppage time, at 45+2', and Louis Mafouta turned the game round at 55' — two goals for a side that barely got out of its own half.

Doumbia gets the point back

Kamory Doumbia equalised at 62' and was the best player on the pitch by some distance. Brest had the last half-hour to find a third and could not, which is how a night worth 2.41 expected goals ends level against a side worth 0.69.

19,809 people watched it, and the home half of them will take the point without asking too many questions about how it arrived.

The first of three squandered leads

Mafouta's goal at 55' put newly promoted Le Mans 2-1 up with more than half an hour still to go, and for a spell it looked like a first Ligue 1 win in over a decade. Doumbia's equaliser seven minutes later denied it — the earliest sign of a pattern that would follow Le Mans through their opening month. They did it again at Rennes on matchday 2, leading 2-0 inside 26 minutes through a second Mafouta brace before Esteban Lepaul's stoppage-time penalty turned it into a 3-2 defeat, and again at home to Lens on matchday 4, 2-0 up inside 44 minutes before Abdallah Sima and Franjo Ivanović leveled it either side of half-time. Three times in their first four matches, a two-goal position turned into something less than a win. Only on matchday 5, at home to Lorient, did Le Mans finally see a lead through to the final whistle.

Brest's own uneven start

Brest's share of the game at the Stade Marie-Marvingt — 26 shots, ten corners, 2.41 expected goals — did not translate into results either side of this draw. They followed it with another 2-2, at home to Toulouse, needing Ludovic Ajorque's goal in the fifth minute of stoppage time to salvage a point after trailing twice. A first win came next, 2-1 away at Le Havre, with Kamory Doumbia scoring both goals from the penalty spot against ten men. Then the form turned: a narrow home defeat to PSG and a first-half lead thrown away at Auxerre made it back-to-back losses. Five matchdays in, Brest have taken a win, two draws and two losses from a season that keeps producing more of the ball and more shots than it does points.

Where it leaves the table

Both sides have since moved past the position this draw first put them in. Le Mans sit 9th with 6 points from five matches — one win, three draws and a defeat, level at nine goals for and against — two points off Paris Saint-Germain's Conference League play-off place in 6th. Brest are two places and a point further back, 11th on 5, with a goal difference of -1 that puts them level with Lorient just below. Five rounds into the season, only two points separate 9th from 16th — the kind of gap that makes this draw look less like a stalemate between two mid-table sides and more like the opening exchange in a scrap neither has settled yet.

Match facts

• 31' — Romain Del Castillo (Brest)
• 45+2' — Dame Guèye (Le Mans)
• 55' — Louis Mafouta (Le Mans)
• 62' — Kamory Doumbia (Brest)

What's next

Both sides are back out on matchday 2 next weekend with a point each and two very different sets of notes to work through — Le Mans on how to keep the ball, Brest on how to finish.