Match Preview: Rennes v Brentford | OneFootball

Brentford continue their pre-season preparations against Ligue 1 side Rennes at Roazhon Park on Saturday evening (5pm kick-off BST).

Keith Andrews’ side travel to France for their penultimate fixture before the start of the 2026/27 Premier League campaign.

Analysis, team news, match officials and more, here’s everything you need to know ahead of the game.

Pre-match Analysis

Stephen Gillett, Playmaker Stats: Why Rennes will provide a stern pre-season test

Brentford take on Rennes in their penultimate pre-season friendly of the summer, with Franck Haise's side likely to provide a good barometer for the Bees.

Named Habib Beye’s successor in the Rennes dugout in February, Haise has quickly put his stamp on The Red and Blacks, introducing a measured yet high-energy brand of football that ultimately secured sixth place in Ligue 1 and a spot in this season's Europa League.

Among the most prolific sides in the French top flight last season, Rennes will aim to hone their attacking threat against their English visitors at Roazhon Park on Saturday - where Brentford will face Ligue 1's reigning Golden Boot winner.

After working his way through the French lower leagues, Estéban Lepaul enjoyed a fabulous 2025/26 campaign, hitting 21 Ligue 1 goals to finish well clear of Marseille's Mason Greenwood and Strasbourg's Joaquín Panichelli (16 apiece) at the top of the scoring charts.

Quick and elusive, the 26-year-old has a rare knack for finding space in the box. Lepaul outperformed his Expected Goals by a huge margin (+4.85 xG) last term to underscore the quality of his finishing, with Rennes the only side to surpass their xG in the French top tier. Rennes have acted decisively in the transfer market to bolster Lepaul’s supply line and the signing of playmaker Adrien Thomasson looks an exciting addition.

Signed on a free from Lens this summer, Adrien Thomasson was the only Ligue 1 player to reach double figures for assists last season, registering 10, and the experienced 32-year-old will inject guile and creativity into Rennes’ midfield.

Thomasson is set to line up against his former Lens team-mate Mamadou Sangaré after the latter's club-record move to Brentford this month, adding an intriguing subplot given the pair lifted the Coupe de France together a matter of months ago.

As well as leading Ligue 1 for assists, Thomasson also ranked first for key passes (81). Sangaré, meanwhile, topped the division for possessions won, regaining the ball on 207 occasions during the 2025/26 campaign - with Thomasson (193) not far behind him. If the pair lock horns on Saturday, it promises to be competitive! 

Likely to adopt a 4-3-3 and favour intense one-on-one battles all over the pitch, Rennes look ideal pre-season opponents from a conditioning perspective, and they also boast impressive technical quality.

Rennes averaged 53 per cent possession last season, with only PSG (218) and Marseille (120) recording more build-up attacks than the club from Brittany (94). A build-up attack is an open-play sequence containing at least 10 passes that either ends in a shot, or includes at least one touch in the opposition's penalty box.

Brentford are likely, therefore, to have opportunities to polish their game both in and out of possession on Saturday.

With summer signings Eliezer Mayenda and Charlie Cresswell, who joined recently from Toulouse on loan with an obligation to buy, Rennes have added further physicality and quality at both ends of the pitch, and both may feature against the Bees.

England Under-21s international Cresswell ranked among Ligue 1's top 10 for aerial duels won, clearances and shots blocked last season, underlining the defensive qualities he should bring to a backline that conceded 33 away goals last term - only relegated Metz shipping more on their travels.

Scout Report

Dan Long, Sky Sports: How Rennes found stability after three turbulent seasons

Rennes had followed up two successive fourth-place finishes in Ligue 1 by dropping to 10th in 2023/24, their lowest in five seasons, prompting a huge squad turnover.

Among those sold were Désiré Doué and Enzo Le Fée, while Kyōgo Furuhashi, Leo Østigård, Glen Kamara and Jordan James arrived as part of the rebuild. Expectations had not been met, and there was clear ambition for it not to happen again. But it did.

Les Rennais went through three managers in 2024/25 - Julien Stéphan, Jorge Sampaoli and Habib Beye - and never once won more than two league games in succession, leading to a 12th-place finish, the lowest in 11 years. The intense recruitment drive had failed to deliver the envisaged European push.

The club stuck with Beye for 2025/26, but adopted an altogether more conservative approach to last summer’s transfer window. Valentin Rongier, Quentin Merlin, Mahdi Camara, Estéban Lepaul and Breel Embolo arrived permanently, while Przemysław Frankowski joined on loan; further funds were recouped by the sales of Adrien Truffert to Bournemouth, Kyōgo to Birmingham, Azor Matusiwa to Ipswich, Arnaud Kalimuendo to Nottingham Forest, and Christopher Wooh to Spartak Moscow.

On paper, what followed during the first five months of the season was encouraging. Despite only two wins from the first 10 Ligue 1 games, they only lost two of those, and what followed was a run of six wins in the next eight.

But Beye was sacked on 9 February after three straight league defeats and a last-16 exit from the Coupe de France at the hands of Marseille. Sébastien Tamboulet was placed in caretaker charge and oversaw an impressive 3-1 win over PSG four days later, before Franck Haise was appointed on a contract running until the summer of 2027.

Speaking after the appointment, Rennes’ sporting director Loïc Désiré said: “Our objective remains the same: to qualify for European competition. We expect a lot from the team. The win against PSG is further proof the players are capable of great things. We expect unity and total commitment from everyone to help us enjoy a very strong end to the season, with results that match our ambition.”

What happened in those final weeks of the season under Haise certainly matched the brief. Rennes won eight of the final 12 games, scoring an average of two goals per game and conceding 1.17, compared to 1.59 scored and 1.64 conceded before his arrival.

A sixth-place finish was secured - the same position as when he arrived - but sufficient for a place in the Europa League league phase.

After three turbulent seasons, there is a welcome sense of calm at Rennes. Belief, too, and evidence the team can meet the expectations placed upon them. The challenge for Haise now is to build upon the excellent work and momentum generated in those last few months to ensure this does not become a false dawn.

In the Dugout

Franck Haise

Franck Haise had a long playing career as a defender, the bulk of which he played in the second tier of French football with Rouen, Laval, Beauvais and Angers.

He took his first steps into coaching with Stade Mayennais, whom he joined as a player-coach in 2003 before substituting himself at half-time in a league game and bringing a conclusion to his playing days at the age of 32. He stayed there for three years, then joined Rennes for the first time, working within the club’s youth setup until 2012 when he moved on to US Changé in the French sixth tier.

Haise’s next move was to Lorient in 2013, where he managed the club’s B team. In 2013/14, he guided the team to the CFA2 Group H title, securing promotion to the fourth tier. Towards the end of the following campaign, Lorient’s first-team manager Sylvain Ripoli promoted him to the role as his assistant and, when Ripoli left in October 2016, Haise oversaw two Ligue 1 matches as caretaker: a 2-2 draw with Montpellier and a heavy 6-0 defeat away at Monaco.

He joined Lens in 2017 and trod a similar path, starting out with two-and-a-half years with the club’s B team. However, when he started working with the first team in February 2020, it was as the permanent replacement for Philippe Montanier. There was near-instant success as he won his first two games in charge before the Ligue 2 season was curtailed early, resulting in Lens’ promotion as runners-up, ironically, to his former club Lorient.

Two seventh-placed finishes in Ligue 1 preceded one of Lens’ greatest-ever seasons, when they finished as runners-up - just one point behind Paris Saint-Germain - and qualified for the Champions League for only the third time which, unsurprisingly, saw him win Manager of the Year. Haise then departed for Nice in the summer of 2024, before he was sacked just after Christmas 2025.

He was only out of work for a matter of weeks, however, with Rennes appointing him on 18 February.

The Gameplan

With François Rauzy, sports journalist at ICI Armorique

ICI Armorique's François Rauzy explains the sort of test that Brentford can expect from Rennes on Saturday evening.

"They are an intense team who play a 4-3-3 with one-on-one marking. They have good movement with the ball and try to push the other team," he told brentfordfc.com.

"From what I saw in the recent friendly against Club Brugge, it was similar to the good games from last season when Franck Haise arrived, and this pre-season seems to have been more like this.

"They like to have the ball and to be intense. They have players that run a lot, too."

Last Time Out

Brentford 4 Wycombe Wanderers 1, (Pre-season fixture, 5 August 2026)

Brentford recorded a 4-1 victory over Wycombe Wanderers in a behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly at Jersey Road on Wednesday.

Mikkel Damsgaard and Rico Henry gave the Bees a two-goal advantage before the interval, with Callum Wilson and Keane Lewis-Potter scoring during the second half.

Club-record signing Mamadou Sangaré made his first appearance for the west Londoners, playing the second 45 minutes against the Sky Bet League One side.