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Ligue 1 preview and tips: Olympique Marseille poised to burst Montpellier's bubble

Marseille celebrate win

Olympique Marseille and Montpellier open round 29 in Ligue 1 on Friday evening at Stade Velodrome, and Tipstrr football pundit Sergiu Baltuta offers his insights into finding the best betting value.

Igor Tudor's Marseille team will try to protect their Champions League spot in a game where they will face a team that was in excellent form before the international break. 

With 10 games remaining Marseille are seven points behind Ligue 1 leaders PSG who also face a difficult game against Lyon this round.

Marseille might be keeping one eye on a title challenge, but more realistically, as they sit two points ahead of third-placed Lens and five clear of Monaco, their main objective right now is to protect the runner-up spot that will secure them a place in next season's Champions League group stage.

Before the recent break Marseille managed an away win against Reims, who had been undefeated in Ligue 1 since Will Still took over in October.

It was Marseille's eighth consecutive away win, but Tudor's team has struggled to replicate that kind of form at home with their last Ligue 1 win at Velodrome being in January, since when they have only managed home successes in the Coupe de France, against Rennes and PSG.

Suggested bet: Marseille to win to nil

Montpellier were one of the most in-form teams in Ligue 1 before the international break, and that uptick in form coincided with the return to the helm of Michel Der Zakarian, 18 months after his previous spell in charge.
Under the Armenian manager, Montpellier picked up 16 points from the six games since his return (won five, drawn one), a record that no other Ligue 1 team can match, nor has any team conceded fewer than their two goals over that six-game sequence.
Der Zakarian's only regret is that those excellent results have probably come too late to help his team enter the fight for European qualification places.
Looking objectively at their good run of results, Montpellier did not come against the strongest opponents with the exception of their 1-1 draw with Lens, as those victories came against Brest, Troyes, Angers, Ajaccio and Clermont, all of whom are in the bottom eight of the Ligue 1 table.
It remains to be seen if they can extend their unbeaten streak to seven or even manage their fourth consecutive win.
Marseille are undefeated in their last Ligue 1 encounters with Montpellier (5 wins and 2 draws), winning the last three games, and at Velodrome Montpellier's last win was in August 2014.

Montpellier's impressive recent stats might just be skewed by the opposition they have faced, while Marseille have the quality at both ends of the pitch to lean the best betting value towards the home team just edging a low-scoring affair.

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