Ligue 1 relegation 2026: Troyes and Auxerre have the worst goal difference, Le Havre cannot clinch safety

Le Havre are 17th in Ligue 1 on two points with no win in five matches, and Nice are 18th on two points with one goal scored all season. Neither club has the worst goal difference in the division. Troyes do. Troyes are 14th on four points, having scored four and conceded eleven in five matches, and minus seven is the lowest figure in the table. Auxerre, 16th, are next at five scored and eleven conceded. The two clubs in the relegation places and the two clubs with the worst goal records are four different clubs, and that is the most useful thing the bottom of this table says in September.

All figures are as of the September 20 update, 42 of the season's 306 matches played, and every survival number below is drawn against the worst case, in which every rival wins out. Three fixtures of the round are still to be played, Auxerre against Brest on Sunday and Nice against Lille and Marseille against Paris Saint-Germain on Monday, which is why six clubs have four matches behind them and twelve have five. Ligue 1 is a points table, so everything below is counted in points.

Take the foot of the table by goals rather than by points and the order barely resembles the standings. Troyes are minus seven. Auxerre are minus six. Nice are minus four, one goal scored and five conceded. Le Havre are minus three, four scored and seven conceded, beaten 3-2 at Toulouse on Sunday. Toulouse themselves are minus two, and no other club in the division is worse than that. Troyes and Auxerre are the only two clubs to have conceded eleven, Troyes across five matches and Auxerre across four. None of this feeds a clinch number on this site, which counts points and nothing else. It is simply the plainest record of how the matches have gone, and by that record the two worst clubs in Ligue 1 are 14th and 16th rather than 17th and 18th.

The worst-case safety line in Ligue 1 this season is 91 points, and a club's survival number is 91 minus what it already has. Six clubs still have 30 matches and 90 points in front of them, Lille, Paris Saint-Germain, Brest, Marseille, Auxerre and Nice. The other twelve have 29 matches and 87. At the top that leaves Monaco needing 78 of their 87, nine points of room across the whole rest of the season. The tail of the same ladder is where it stops being generous. Lorient and Toulouse need 86 of 87. Lens and Troyes need 87 of 87, every point still on their schedule. Marseille and Auxerre need 88 of 90, and Nice 89 of 90. Le Havre have no number at all: two points plus the 87 still available is a ceiling of 89, and the line is 91.

Turn those into a margin and five clubs have none worth the name. Lens and Troyes can drop nothing. Lorient, Toulouse and Nice can drop one point, and in a points table one point is the same as none, because the cheapest way to drop any is a draw and a draw costs two. Lorient's 86 cannot be built from 28 wins and a draw in 29 matches, which comes to 85. Nice's 89 cannot be built from 29 wins and a draw in 30, which comes to 88. So five clubs would have to win every remaining match to put survival beyond the reach of anyone else's results, and Le Havre could win every remaining match and still not manage it. Le Mans, Marseille and Auxerre can afford exactly one draw and nothing else. What these figures mark is the point at which a club stops needing to check another score. They are not a prediction that anyone is going down, and after five matches that point sits near the ceiling for most of the division.

Troyes and Lens are indistinguishable everywhere the table counts points and separable only where it counts goals. Both have played five, both have one win, one draw and three defeats, both have four points, both have 29 matches left, both need all 87 points still available, and neither carries a relegation tragic number. The goals split them. Lens have scored nine and conceded nine. Troyes have scored four and conceded eleven. Lens drew 2-2 at Le Mans on September 14 and lost 2-1 at Monaco on Saturday. Troyes lost 2-0 at Angers on Sunday. That is the whole of the difference between 13th and 14th, and it is also the honest limit of what five matches can tell anyone.

Two clubs in the division carry a relegation tragic number and sixteen do not. Le Havre's is 29 and Nice's is 30, which in each case is every match the club has left, and the single match between those two figures is Nice's game in hand rather than anything either club has done. The sixteen blanks are the more useful half of the column. A blank does not mean a club is safe. It means no run of that club's own defeats, not even losing every remaining match, would make the drop certain by itself, because only two clubs go down and the clubs above would have to fail as well. Troyes could lose all 29 and still not be mathematically relegated on their own results. Le Havre's empty survival column is the same idea in reverse, with one feature of its own: a ceiling of 89 cannot rise, only fall, because every match played removes three points from what is still available. Their number appears only if the 91-point line comes down to meet it, and that takes other clubs dropping points.

Auxerre host Brest later on Sunday. It is the game in hand that has kept them on four matches, and the first chance for a club with a minus six goal difference to change it. On Monday Nice host Lille, the club with one goal in four matches and the division's other relegation tragic number against the side that has conceded two. The table then stands still until October 10, when Lens host Lyon. A Lens win keeps their survival number and anything else removes it, because four points and 28 matches left cannot reach 91 whatever follows. Lille host Le Havre on October 11. The full fixture list is at.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number, or magic number, is the minimum further points that guarantee an outcome even if every rival takes every point still on its schedule. A tragic number is the further defeats after which an outcome is impossible even if the club wins everything else. A blank in either column means no run of that club's own results settles the question. Rank ranges give the highest and lowest finish still arithmetically reachable, and ties are counted against the club in question, so a clinch here can trail an official announcement by a day. The live table with every club's survival and relegation figures is at, the remaining fixtures at, the European qualification and relegation rules at, and plays the rest of the season out result by result. Troyes have their own page at, Lens at and Nice at.