French foursome vie to end year on high note

Montpellier, Paris Saint-Germain, Lille and Lyon will all be bidding to end the year on top of the French top flight in the final round of fixtures before the winter break on Wednesday.PSG were prevented from returning to the summit after being held to a 0-0 draw by Lille on Sunday, which left them below leaders Montpellier on goal difference.Defending champions Lille and Lyon are two points back, in third and fourth place respectively.Of the top four, Lille are the only side who face a home match on Wednesday, as they welcome third-bottom Nice to Stade Villeneuve d’Ascq.Montpellier visit Evian and Lyon are at Valenciennes, while PSG will take on Saint-Etienne — who are unbeaten in six games - at the imposing Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, in what will be the final Ligue 1 fixture of 2011.After a three-game losing streak in late November and early December, PSG had got their title bid back on track with successive wins over Auxerre and Sochaux prior to Sunday’s stalemate with Lille.Should Montpellier fail to win at Evian, victory for PSG would give them the honorific title of autumn champions, but coach Antoine Kombouare says his only motivation is to finish the year as strongly as possible.“I don’t think about that,” he said. “What comes to mind is the need for recovery so that we can produce a great performance on Wednesday.“A very important match is waiting for us at Saint-Etienne. We’ve played an extra game, on Wednesday (against Athletic Bilbao in the Europa League), so we have one less day to recover.“They will be waiting for us in The Cauldron (Stade Geoffroy-Guichard). We need to give ourselves a big push before our well-deserved holidays, because it’s been five tough months.”Despite their huge summer investment, PSG have yet to find a consistent winning formula and sports daily L’Equipe awarded a string of low marks to their attacking players after the draw with Lille. The newspaper was equally unimpressed by Lille’s attacking trio of Eden Hazard, Joe Cole and Moussa Sow, but PSG goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu’s score of 7/10 paid testament to the fact that the visitors created the better chances.