Last, improving and not behind, the MHSC is preparing for a second half of the season where everything will be at stake

Théo Sainte-Luce, buteur pour son retour dimanche, et le MHSC ont quatre points de retard sur le barragiste. MAXPPP – JEAN MICHEL MART

If it enters the Coupe de France on Saturday, December 21, the Hérault club is moving towards a year 2025 where its survival in the elite will hang by a thread and there will be turning points that should not be missed.

Before the holidays, Montpellier HSC will take a cup. Not to celebrate the end of the year in Ligue 1, sealed with a draw against Nice on Sunday and a last place still stuck to its heels. Saturday, it will be in Puy-en-Velay (National 2), challenged as an entry into the Coupe de France. At the time of this meeting to which its supporters are not allowed, the Hérault club will be somewhat freed from the worries of daily bread that have accompanied it since August. They won't be far away, ready to invite themselves back as soon as 2025 comes around, a new year in which everything will be at stake, especially survival in the elite.

The Ligue 1 ranking

“We're going to spend Christmas three or four points from the place we want, but when we look at the return fixtures, we're only hosting teams like us. So we mustn't, absolutely mustn't, lower our heads and tell ourselves that we're doomed”, Jean-Louis Gasset projected himself as soon as the draw against the Aiglons was recorded on Sunday.

The Pailladin coach may have “turned 120 in 7 matches” Since his return to the head of the team, as he suggested jokingly the day before yesterday, he has lost neither his calculator nor his sense of reality. For the MHSC, everything should be played at home.

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The war of the three will take place in La Mosson

In this Mosson where he took all his points, he will receive during the second part of the championship the three teams which are directly ahead of him: Angers (15th) from January 12, Saint-Etienne (16th) on March 16 and Le Havre (17th) on April 6. The war of the three will take place to secure at least a play-off place (16th).

The January calendar

Ligue 1

Lyon – MHSC on January 4 (9 p.m.); MHSC – Angers on January 12*; MHSC – Monaco on January 19*; Toulouse – MHSC January 26*.

Coupe de France (32nd round)

Le Puy (National 2) – MHSC December 21 (6 p.m.). 
If qualified: Round of 16 on January 15.

* Date subject to confirmation by the LFP.

“We are proving that against more prestigious teams, and even Lens at home, we are capable of doing something. That's positive”, Gasset hammered home. Montpellier is starting from a long way back. Among the ten previous teams in the first division, only Sète, during the 1947-48 season, managed to stay up after having totalled 9 points at the break. Except that the predecessors of the MHSC have not created an abysmal gap: three and four points ahead this morning. Between now and these fear matches, La Paillade will have to have confirmed its progress, physical and tactical, noted by its coach. For the moment, only its defence and its unfortunate propensity to concede at least two goals per match are totally resisting this Gasset effect. The two Nice goals on Sunday, scored in the heart of an apathetic Pailladin block, demonstrated this.

Read also: Coupe de France: "Serious troubles", proximity and past with Saint-Etienne, why Montpellier supporters are banned from Le Puy-en-Velay

With 38 goals against them in 15 matches, Montpellier has not found a remedy. Small consolation, this handicap is not irremediable: Rennes (44 goals conceded after 15 matches in 1969-70) and Nice (39, 1978-79) had survived it. Two examples, certainly not the freshest, to keep in mind before a winter transfer market (January 1-February 3) that could change the face of the Hérault squad. To which there are 19 league matches left to recover. And to offer itself a cup, a real one, on the evening of May 18 and the end of a season that will determine what tomorrow will be made of.

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