Speaking to the media after his side's narrow loss to Toulouse, OGC Nice coach Lucien Favre bemoaned his side's lack of spark, despite dominating large periods of the match.

Coach, how do you judge your team's performance?
We made the running. We had 70% possession. We had a good chance with Srarfi in the first half. It looks as though we should have had a penalty on Makengo as well. We continued in the second period, but we lacked a cutting edge. Passing the ball around is all well and good, but you also need to dribble, the make things happen. You have to admit that Toulouse scored a great goal, with their only chance. Perhaps a scoreless draw would have been a fairer result. We didn't create enough scoring chances to hope to win, we didn't do enough with the ball to upset their defence. We made quick passes, but sometimes that isn't enough. The two players that had chances for us were Bassem Srarfi on the right and JV Makengo on the left. We needed to do more in the second half. Toulouse sat back and defended well with their 4-5-1 formation.

In the last week you have lost to the two bottom sides...
We lost to Metz with ten men. Today was also very tough. These matches can all go either way, I've been saying that since the start of the season. We need to create more danger for our opponents. The absentees? It's true that we're missing a lot of players, but I don't like talking about the players that didn't play. Tonight we had a very young side. But when you can't score at one end, you have to make sure you don't concede at the other.

Nice haven't won a single game without Balotelli this season...
No… but it's not that simple either. There's no question of what Mario brings to the side. But apart from that, tonight we didn't have enough spark, we didn't get enough crosses in. Allan Saint-Maximin and his speed was also missing tonight. But we need to do more. When we conceded the goal, we were stalled at the back.

Seri is also out of form at the moment and that showed in midfield...
There are lots of little details, the cutting edge, the rhythm, the pace of the game, and that goes for Mika and the others as well. I am not going to talk about individual cases.

---