In front of the press, Lucien Favre savoured a victory secured over a "good Rennes side", the third in eight days for his players.

Lucien, can we say that the Gym snatched the victory from Rennes on Sunday?

Snatched is a big word. Of course, it could have been a draw. We had two great chances in the first half, Rennes had one or two chances, but not as clear-cut. In the second half there was a bit of fatigue, I thought. That doesn’t surprise me, when you play away from home on Thursday evening, it’s then tough to play again on the Sunday. Taking these elements into account, I think that our match was very good. And we won 1-0...

You scored against the run of play...

Yes, at that point of the game. I think we had about 60% of the possession in the first period, in the second, I don’t have the figures, but it must have gone the other way, we defended more. But we score, something we could have done in the first half if we had been better in certain positions.

The goal from Mario ?

The goal was very nice. In any case, he was alone in the box, he had to go it alone.

Even though we could find things to say about his performance, Mario can score at any moment…

As you are insinuating in your question, yes he was less effective tonight. But he, like the others, played against Monaco, played on Thursday... we will see what I will do the next time we play three games in a week, because as I have said for a while, this system is good, but you need back-ups, not only one. I was going to take him off, but I waited a bit longer, and I said to myself "go on five more minutes"... and then in the end after his goal, it was Mario that asked to come off (smiles). Seri also came off, he had some pain behind his thighs at the break, we couldn’t take the risk of a tear.

It’s been a good week for the Gym…

Yes it’s been a very good week. We beat Monaco, we won away from home in the Europa League and today, we beat a good team, who are tough to manage with their speed up-front.

Despite their pressure, you defended well, with the Marlon - Dante partnership working well.

The three partnerships that I have tried in the last three matches have all worked, that is what I wanted to know. If we remain in this system, with the matches that will build up back-to-back from now until December, we will be obliged to change things, we will need to freshen it up.

Can we say that Nice are back?

We have got back on-track a bit. The others started a lot better than us. I keep the same philosophy, we will continue to work, to work on the system, maybe find another. We will savor these three victories by analysing the wins as we need to. There is very little between the sides in these games even if the scores in the Monaco and Zulte Waregem games could let you think otherwise.

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