Bastia vs Toulouse Predictions & Betting Tips, Match Previews

Bastia had a pretty standard season in Ligue 1 last year as they made a marginal improvement on their 12th place finish in 2015 by ending the campaign in 10th spot. It was generally an uneventful season, and I would imagine they are looking towards more of the same this term.

Their season couldn’t have started in a much more difficult fashion as they hosted Ligue 1 champions PSG. However, Bastia actually held their own against the dominant French champions, with it taking until the 73rd minute for Layvin Kurzawa to score the only goal of the game for the visitors.

Next time out Bastia faced a visit to Lorient, and it went remarkable well for them as new signings Allan Saint-Maximim and Enzo Crivelli notched three goals between them to take a comfortable 3-0 victory. They couldn’t repeat the same sort of performance when they lost 2-0 at Caen though, so they will be looking for a win on Saturday in an attempt to pull themselves away from the bottom of the Ligue 1 table.

Toulouse spent the large majority of last season battling against relegation, but thanks to losing just two of their final ten Ligue 1 matches, they managed to drag themselves out of the bottom three and finish a point above Reims. Their standout player throughout the season was Wissam Ben Yedder, but the striker has now left for Sevilla.

This caused a lot of concern among the Toulouse faithful, but so far they’ve looked rather good. They managed a goalless draw at Marseille in the Ligue 1 opener and followed this with an incredible 4-1 thrashing of Bordeaux. A trip to Saint-Etienne followed this, where they turned defensive again and settled for another goalless draw.

Toulouse’s start to the season definitely hasn’t been the easiest run of games, but they’ve come through them unbeaten and find themselves in the top half of the table. If they can keep this going they should be able to secure safety fairly early in the campaign.

The visitors have generally lined up defensively away from home and will be looking to stifle Bastia. The hosts have only won two of their last seven at home in Ligue 1 as well and have failed to score in two of their three league games this season. Toulouse have had three goalless draws in their last four away days in Ligue 1 and have drawn five of their last seven on the road.

This makes odds of 2/1 for a Draw on Saturday look a good value bet, and I’m backing another 0-0 draw at 6/1 for my correct score prediction as well.