Home comforts against Rennes, and a record with two halves
Read this one backwards first. The file lists every score with the home side first, so the line on the sixteenth of September, 2026 — away to Anderlecht, in the UEFA Europa League, 1-2 — is a two-one Lyon win. Anderlecht one, Lyon two, on a Wednesday, with the status reading finished. A two-one away win is the friendliest score there is: close enough to feel it, settled enough to enjoy it, and it travels home with you. Underneath that one sits a longer thread, and it runs through Rennes. The eighteenth of August, 2024, away: the line reads 3-0 — Rennes three, Lyon nil. The twenty-sixth of April, 2025, with Lyon at home at the Groupama Stadium: four-one. The fourteenth of September, 2025, away at the Roazhon Park: the line reads 3-1, Rennes three, Lyon one, a second bad afternoon against the same address. The third of May, 2026, at home: four-two. And then, on the Saturday of this month — the nineteenth, at the Groupama Stadium again — four-nil. Put the Rennes rows in two piles and the record has two halves. At home: four-one, four-two, four-nil — twelve scored, three conceded, three wins, and the margins not even getting narrower. Away: nil-three and one-three, twice turned over against the same opponent, one goal scored across both trips. Same fixture, same colour of shirt in the away column, and a different team depending on which way the coach is pointing. Whatever the explanation turns out to be, the two piles could hardly disagree more sharply. Two away afternoons at the same opponent, and the shape of the pair is a habit rather than a blip: a nil-three and a one-three are both games lost before the end, and both read the same way in the column — the home side's number first, Lyon's second, and the gap the wrong size. One of the two trips has a ground named on it, the Roazhon Park. Both have the same scoreline flavour, and neither has been repeated at home even once. The week just gone sits on top of both halves. The Wednesday brought the Anderlecht win in the Europa League — two-one away, the home side's one goal matching the two in the other column. The Saturday brought the four-nil over Rennes at the Groupama Stadium. Two afternoons, six scored, one conceded, and the freshest line on the page is the biggest win in it. A record with two halves is more interesting than a record with one. A page of nothing but wins would give a writer no purchase at all; this one has a genuine fault line down the middle of it, and every Rennes afternoon flips a coin between the two sides. On Saturday it landed the right way up, four-nil. Which half of the record a given afternoon belongs to is the question every line on this page is quietly asking. Underneath all of that is the league line, which lives in the numbers block below rather than in this prose. It is worth reading next to the scenes, because the scenes and the summary agree with each other this time. By the numbers — Ligue 1: 2nd · 5 played · 3–2–0 · 10–2 · 11 pts · form WDWDW (oldest → newest). All data from ScoreCrowd's match records, retrieved 24 September 2026. Whatever the numbers say, the scenes say this: the home half of this record is doing the work, the away half is the question hanging over it, and the week on top could hardly have gone much better — a European two-one away and a four-nil at home. Five Rennes afternoons, one European night, and a record with two halves and a very good week over the top of it.