Toulouse score in first-half stoppage time and go on to beat Strasbourg 3-1, climbing into Ligue 1's top half

Toulouse beat Strasbourg 3-1 at the Stadium on Friday night, turning a tight first half into a comfortable evening with two goals inside twenty second-half minutes either side of a Giovanni Reyna reply. It is the kind of result that does not change much on its own in a league this bunched up in the middle, but it is exactly the sort of three points a mid-table side needs to bank when the fixture is winnable.

Santiago Hidalgo broke the deadlock in first-half stoppage time, turning in a Sion Oppong pass right before the break. Eleven minutes into the second half, Mark McKenzie made it two, heading home a Cristian Cásseres Jr. delivery. Strasbourg hit back through Giovanni Reyna at 67', cutting the gap to one, but Toulouse had an answer ready: Thomas Jørgensen volleyed in a Rasmus Nicolaisen pass at 76' to make it 3-1 and put the result beyond doubt.

Booked, then the matchwinner

Jørgensen's goal came with a twist: he had been shown a yellow card at 40', one of six in a feisty night at the Stadium, and was still on a booking when he struck the decisive third 36 minutes later. Strasbourg's Karim Coulibaly and Gessime Yassine were both booked in the first half, Toulouse's Christ Tapé and Niko Sigur either side of the interval, and substitute Jacobo Ortega Conde picked up Strasbourg's sixth and last card at 88'.

• 45'+1' — Santiago Hidalgo (Toulouse), assist Sion Oppong
• 56' — Mark McKenzie (Toulouse), header, assist Cristian Cásseres Jr.
• 67' — Giovanni Reyna (Strasbourg)
• 76' — Thomas Jørgensen (Toulouse), volley, assist Rasmus Nicolaisen

Line-ups

Strasbourg's form keeps swinging

This was the sharpest kind of reversal for Strasbourg, who had arrived in Toulouse on the back of a 5-1 away win at Auxerre the previous round. Before that rout, their run had been four straight league defeats — to Nice, PSG and Rennes among them — so Friday's loss is less a new slump than a return to the pattern that had held for most of the autumn, with one big result bookended by a cluster of losses.

Toulouse, by contrast, have not lost back-to-back league games all season. Coming in off a 0-2 defeat at Marseille, they answered it the way they have tended to all year, never stringing two bad results together — three wins, four draws and three defeats from their first ten matches now.

Where it leaves both sides

The win takes Toulouse to 13 points from ten games, level with ninth-placed Lens on points but behind on goal difference, which puts them 10th — their highest league position of the season so far, above both Brest and Lorient. Strasbourg remain 13th on 10 points from ten games. Their goal difference of -4 is the worst of any side outside the bottom five of the table, a figure this result did nothing to repair.