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PARIS -- Former Brazil international Dante delivered two assists -- one with his right foot, one with his left -- as Nice claimed back top spot in the French league with a 3-0 win over Toulouse on Sunday.The elegant defender is one of the astute purchases made by Nice during the offseason, alongside Mario Balotelli and Younes Belhanda. Balotelli is still injured and did not play against Toulouse while Belhanda, a midfielder with excellent technique, made it 2-0 after Alassane Plea broke the deadlock.Jean-Michael Seri completed the win with an angled right-footed shot.Nice has a three-point lead over Monaco, which thrashed Bastia 5-0 on Saturday. Defending champion Paris Saint-Germain is lagging four points behind Nice in third place following its shock 3-0 loss against Montpellier.Dante found Plea with a long ball to the back of the Toulouse defense in the 23rd minute, and the forward fired a low shot between `keeper Alban Lafonts legs to put the hosts in front.Three minutes later, Belhanda beat the offside trap and made the most of another lofted ball delivered by Dante, this time with his left foot. Belhanda controlled the ball and lobbed the powerless Lafont, who also lost his one-on-one with Seri in the 65th minute.---RENNES 2, SAINT-ETIENNE 0Rennes players needed time to shoot on target before Paul-Georges Ntep scored his first French league goal this season and inspired the Brittany side to a 2-0 win over Saint-Etienne on Sunday.Rennes, which climbed to fourth, dominated the first half but missed several chances. Christian Gourcuffs team was more efficient after the interval, with Kamil Grosicki making it 2-0 in added time after Ntep had put the hosts in front in the 54th minute.Yoann Gourcuff had been denied at 0-0 while Ntep and Adrien Hunou both missed chances. Rennes efforts were finally rewarded when France international Ntep went inside the box, dribbled past defender Kevin Theophile-Catherine and fired a low shot at the near post.Grosicki then scored a possible goal of the season with a superb finish from Ludovic Baals cross. The Polish forward connected with the ball just inside the area and flicked it into the top right corner.Rennes trails Nice by 12 points and has five more than Saint-Etienne.---MARSEILLE 3, NANCY 0Marseille secured its biggest win this season with goals from Florian Thauvin, Bafetimbi Gomis and Clinton Njie.After producing just one win and two goals in six matches under new coach Rudi Garcia, Marseille gave a convincing display of attacking football against a side which came to the Stade Velodrome to defend.The win lifted the nine-time champions to 10th place, 18 points behind Nice.Thauvin opened the scoring just after halftime with a shot into the top corner, Gomis netted his first goal since Garcias arrival 10 minutes from time and Njie completed the rout in added time.Gomis was insulted by his own Marseille fans during the game for recent positive comments he made about Saint-Etienne, his first club.Jerome Boateng Jersey . 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Capitals head coach Adam Oates said Ovechkin was injured in the first period against the Vancouver Canucks on Monday and clarified it was not a head injury.The reaction to defeat at Lords speaks volumes for the febrile atmosphere in English cricket at present.With a couple of newspapers calling for the selectors to be sacked, you would think defeat at Lords, or defeat against Pakistan, was an unprecedented disaster. But actually England lost at Lords in 2015 and 2014 and Pakistan beat them 2-0 barely six months ago.So quite why the defeat at Lords has caused such shock is puzzling. Pakistan are a fine side with, arguably, the best bowling attack in the world. They are rated above England in the rankings and Lords (and The Oval and Manchester) offer England little home advantage. Anyone surprised by Pakistan playing well - or Englands batting looking fragile - really hasnt been paying attention.The consternation over the absence of James Anderson is puzzling, too. The decision not to risk him at Lords - a not unreasonable decision bearing in mind he had yet to play a game after sustaining a shoulder injury - was not responsible for the defeat. Englands na?ve batting, as Alastair Cook termed it, was.Its certainly not a selection fiasco in the grand traditions of English cricket. Take the Major Nigel Bennett episode, for example. Major Bennett popped into The Oval in 1946 to renew his county membership after the war, but was mistaken for Major Leo Bennet - who had represented the British Empire XI during the war - and offered the captaincy. He took up the offer before anyone realised a mistake had been made and went on to lead Surrey to what was, at the time, the worst season in their history. He averaged 16 with the bat.Still, Andersons return to the squad - he bowled in the nets on Wednesday and looks fully fit - is welcome. So, too, is Ben Stokes, who admitted he required the bowling he gained in the Championship match he played against Lancashire instead of the first Test to regain match fitness. Both of them are highly likely to play though the selectors have given the captain and coach - a coach, it should be remember, who has barely seen a weeks county cricket in his life - every option with an unusually large 14-man squad.With Stokes and Woakes available as allrounders, England have plentiful options here. One of those is to field a second spinner (Saqlain Mushtaq worked with Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali in training on Wednesday) and either drop one of the batsmen (probably James Vince, but perhaps Gary Ballance) or play only three of Stokes, Woakes, Anderson and Stuart Broad.ddddddddddddBearing in mind Pakistans excellence against spin and Englands record of success fielding a two-man spin attack in home Tests - they have not won a game in England using a two-man spin attack since 1985 - and that looks both an unwise and unlikely scenario. England have only fielded a two-man spin attack at home six times in the last 20 years. The last time - at The Oval in 2013 - saw Simon Kerrigans unfortunate debut. The time before that was in 2009 when Monty Panesar helped James Anderson bat England to what had seemed an unlikely draw against Australia in Cardiff.It seems more likely that England will pick the four-man seam attack with one spinner. Whether that is Rashid or Moeen remains to be seen, though Rashid does look the favourite at this stage. Pakistan look likely to play only one spinner though, as Stokes remarked on Wednesday, Yasir may well be the best legspinner since Shane Warne.As well as a few Lancashire players, Glen Chapple and Steve Rhodes attended England training on Wednesday with a view to taking coaching tips back to their counties. Matt Parkinson, the Lancashire legspinner, will again bowl in the nets on Thursday (he was with the England squad at Lords) and Mason Crane, the Hampshire legspinner, will do the same at The Oval. The England camp also hope to continue to engage with former players and create situations where they can pass on their tips to the current team. Andy Caddick is expected to speak to the squad at Edgbaston and Darren Gough will do so later in the summer.Although the outfield at Old Trafford is not especially pretty - the result of staging lucrative Rihanna and Beyonce concerts here in recent weeks - the pitch is expected to be good. It should offer some pace, bounce and spin as the surface wears; in short, it should reward good cricket.Lancashire played two spinners in their last Championship match here. One of them - Parkinson - took a five-wicket haul in the first innings. The groundstaff are using the cannabis hot lamps we have seen previously at Edgbaston to promote grass growth on the outfield (either that or they have moved into a most unorthodox sideline) but, unless heavy rain hits, it should only be a cosmetic problem. ' ' '