Chamonix Montblanc took a comfortable 3:0 victory over Brianson in the Magnus League on Saturday evening. The hosts had been expected to bounce back after picking up two wins from their opening four matches, but the result left them rooted to seventh place with zero points on the board. To be fair, the visitors have been more consistent in front of goal, and this win moved them a step further clear of the lower half.
Brianson's recent form had been uneven at best. They beat Marseille and Rouen in mid-September but followed those with heavy defeats to Grenoble and Nice. The 0:5 loss on Friday must have sat badly with the coaching staff, who likely knew Chamonix would not be taking things easy. And here's the thing about teams that concede freely — once the goals start flowing, the structure tends to unravel quickly.
Chamonix's own run had been mixed. They had won three of their last five, including some high-scoring affairs against Sergi-Pontoise, Anglet and Amiens. But they also knew how to grind out results when needed, as their victory over Gap showed. By then, the visitors had already established a rhythm that Brianson simply could not match.
The statistics, when you look at them, tell the story without embellishment. Chamonix controlled the tempo and created more clear-cut chances. Brianson's high line was picked apart time and again, and the home side ran out of legs before the final whistle. A fourth straight win for the visitors in their last four games now.
The result means Chamonix remain in fifth place with a slight advantage over the teams below them. Brianson's position at seventh is unchanged, though the gap to safety has widened something fierce. The table goes out of the window in these games sometimes, but today there was no hiding place for the home side.
