Ligue 1 Review | Has overreliance on Jonathan David cost Lille’s Champions League hopes?  | OneFootball

Lille OSC’s Champions League hopes took a significant blow on Saturday evening as they lost 2-1 away to Olympique Lyonnais and slipped from fifth in the table to seventh. Control of the match had been in their hands, as Bafodé Diakité opened the scoring in the first minute for Bruno Génésio’s side.

However, it would all come quickly crashing down for Les Dogues. The VAR spotted an infraction in the Lille box that had gone unnoticed by most of the players, as Thomas Meunier used his arm to block an attempt on goal from Alexandre Lacazette.

The Lyon captain stepped up to the spot to equalise late in the first half, registering his 11th of the season, while the seventh-minute substitute Rayan Cherki (on for the injured Ernest Nuamah) would provide his boyhood club the winner in the 70th minute.

On a night when Lyon could turn to their bench and bring on fresh options like Cherki and Georges Mikautadze, there was the sense that Lille had no plan B, no choice other than to hope that Jonathan David would conjure up some magic and rescue them.

Can anyone blame Jonathan David?

Fingers itched after the match to find someone to blame, and even David, whose 14 Ligue 1 goals this season have propelled Lille up the standings, found himself a target, to the dismay of Génésio. His head coach cautioned, “I’m not going to blame a guy who has gotten us out of a rut several times.”

Lille’s current predicament of three losses in their last five games (across all competitions) shouldn’t be laid at the feet of their star striker. He’s the third top scorer in Ligue 1 behind Ousmane Dembélé and Mason Greenwood and managed to find the net seven times in the Champions League.

Without David, Lille’s season likely would look vastly different. However, that is exactly the issue. Les Dogues have become overreliant on the Canadian international when his current form cannot carry the team. Of his 14 league goals, 11 of them were scored before the Christmas break, with only three coming in the second half of the season.

The result of this can be seen across Lille’s narrow scorelines in 2025, as they have won only three matches across all competitions by more than a one-goal margin, while two of those games ended with their opposition down to ten men.

Injuries and transfers leave Lille dry

Lille can point to several circumstances that seem out of their hands as injuries and disappointing transfers have impacted the squad. Edon Zhegrova and Tiago Santos’s lengthy spells out of the team have cost the club two of their most creative threats, while the arrival of back-up striker Chuba Akpom on loan from Ajax has done little to ease the burden on David.

Akpom had a promising start, scoring twice in his first two games against Le Havre AC and Stade Rennais, but since then, the Englishman has run dry. Génésio appears to have lost some faith, as the striker hasn’t been picked in a starting lineup since the 4-1 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain on the 3rd of March.

With only six games left in the season, the worry for Les Dogues is clear. They need to go on a consistent run of wins if they have any hope of playing Champions League football next winter. However, it is unclear how they will manage to do this outside of David finding a new purple patch.

This week’s Ligue 1 sub-plots

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GFFN | Nick Hartland