Sochaux hoping to continue turnaround against Auxerre

Soccer Betting Lines

11/09/2007 - Sochaux, France (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Sochaux got off to a terrible start this season that saw the club go winless in its first eight games and fall into the relegation zone just one year after securing a spot in the UEFA Cup.

The team is still stuck in the bottom three in the standings, but has taken eight points from its last five games and is just six points out of a spot in the top half of the table.

On Saturday, Sochaux will try to continue to turn its fortunes around when the club hosts another bottom-half team, Auxerre.

The visitors also started poorly this campaign and have already lost eight of their first 13 games. However, like Sochaux, Auxerre has seen an improvement in its recent form, winning three of its last six games to move one point clear of Sochaux.

Hantz believes that Sochaux has yet to show its true colors this season, and that this contest will be an important one in attempting to erase such a bad month of August.

The Sochaux boss will be without Bojan Jokic (thigh), but he is expected to have the services of goalkeeper Teddy Richert (ankle) and midfielder Stephane Dalmat (thigh) after both have overcome injury issues.

Auxerre manager Jean Fernandez will bring a relatively healthy squad into Saturday's contest, with Benoit Pedretti, Daniel Niculae and Kevin Lejeune each battling minor knocks but expected to play.

In other Ligue 1 action on Saturday, fifth-place Le Mans hosts top-half club St Etienne, Lille has lost two of its last three games and entertains Nice, last-place Metz takes on disappointing 17th-place club Lens, while Strasbourg travels to Monaco. Nancy sits four points behind league-leaders Lyon and visits PSG, and Caen carries a five-game unbeaten streak into its contest with Valenciennes.

On Sunday, Rennes and Bordeaux, two teams in the top four, battle at Parc Lescure, Toulouse invades Lorient and Lyon hosts a Marseille side that is second from the bottom in the league table.

Lasveggas Soccer Betting News

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.