Rennes vs Everton Predictions, Betting Tips and Match Previews

Rennes and Everton will continue to prepare for the new season ahead with Saturday’s friendly match that will serve them both well to perfect their form and polish their tactics.

After a surprisingly pleasant season last year in which they finished 5^th in Ligue 1, Rennes have been back to work in pre-season ahead of the new campaign. Finishing fifth the previous season means that the French side automatically qualified for the Europa League and find themselves among some of Europe’s best teams, such as Chelsea, AC Milan and Villarreal.

Despite their fine form last season, club friendlies haven’t gone exactly their way. Having only started playing matches in mid-July, Rennes lost to last year’s Europa League semi-finalist RB Salzburg 3-0. The following week they narrowly lost to 3-2 to Anderlecht. Despite these negative results, they’re to be taken with a grain of salt. The club has done well to set up games against teams of the same quality as them in order to prepare for their European journey and gaining firsthand experience on how other European teams work is a good move.

In any case, they need to improve both their defense and their attack, because playing in all domestic competitions and a European one whilst conceding too many goals and not scoring enough of them is a bad sign, but the transfer window still has a long way to go before closing for the summer. Manager Sabri Lamouchi, who lead Ivory Coast to the 2014 World Cup, has enough experience with big tournaments and is preparing for his first full season in charge of the club.

Everton are also preparing for the new season ahead. Last year proved to be an interesting one for the Toffees, but not exactly a positive one either. After going on a spending spree during the previous summer transfer window- in which they signed some strong players like Sigurdsson and Pickford- Ronald Koeman’s side seemed to be the real deal. After failing miserable, Sam Allardyce was brought in to replace the Dutchman. This appointment, however, was just as miserable for the Everton fans- but Big Sam got the job done. After saving the club from a worrying relegation situation, Allardyce was replaced with Marco Silva- a manager with a much more attacking style of play.

Despite offloading Rooney, Funes Mori and Klaasen, and signing Richarlison for an eye-watering 50 million pounds, results in pre-season still haven’t gone entirely their way. It began with a 22-0 destruction of Irdning in a game that was a total mismatch and the Toffees have since gone downhill with a draw against League One side Bury, another with Lille, a narrow defeat to Porto and a surprising 3-0 loss to the newly-promoted Blackburn Rovers.

Friendlies are often irrelevant and mainly serve as a way to test the waters before official competitions start up again, so Marco Silva shouldn’t be too worried.

Taking into account both teams’ pre-season performances, it’s tough to say who the winner would be. For this reason alone I believe that a draw is the most likely outcome between the sides.

Furthermore, both teams have conceded a lot of goals between them so far. Rennes have let in 6 in the past two and Everton have conceded 4 in as many games-, so backing over 3.5 goals is probably a safe bet to make too, while a 2-2 score looks a great value offering for the correct score prediction.