In front of the press, Lucien Favre recognised that his side struggled offensively, whilst concluding that a win for his side wouldn’t have been undeserved…

Coach, how do you feel with the point you picked up against Nantes on Sunday?

We didn’t play badly. We had possession, especially in the second half. I think we deserved to take the three points. We will take one. Nantes had two chances, we had 3-4 more but on the whole, we would have deserved the win. In the way we play, we have never doubted it. But we need to be more pragmatic, offensively and defensively.

You conceded another ‘gift’ of a penalty…

No penalties, no red cards. We said that before the game. It’s important. You can’t make a foul in the box. But there are positional errors, from two or three players which put us into difficulty. This season, we have made a lot of mistakes like this. There was no danger from that move. It’s a gift.

This draw allows you to put an end to your bad run…

Yes. In our last games, there were still good things in the way we played, in certain parts of the game. Today, we only got one point, but sometimes you need to know how to keep it. And you need to know how to get that bit of luck which makes the difference.

But you struggled in attack…

Today, yes. We talk about the penalty, but we rarely got Nantes out of position. We need to be more probing. It’s not just the forwards, it’s the whole team. But to play against Nantes is not easy. They double up, press well and create danger when they win the ball back. If we want to be better, we need to have more “commitment” if you like, but often that gives the idea of getting stuck in. But it’s true that Nantes were committed in the duels.

You had 14 corners in this match, but that didn’t really lead to much…

On the whole, it was disappointing, except after Cyprien came on.

How do you see things going forward?

As I said before the match, after our good run and the win over Saint-Etienne, we thought too much about the fixture list and we forgot to play. If against Metz, Toulouse and Dijon (matches that we dominated), we had even got draws, that would change the league table a lot. We need to take the positives even during a bad run. We need to analyse everything. But then it’s clear that we can’t afford to get a man sent off or to concede a penalty. But if we hide behind that, we won’t move forward.

These “gifted” goals also come from the fact that apart from Dante, all your experienced defenders have been injured for a while!

Yes, but we can’t do anything about that. But this evening, apart from the penalty that Burner gave away, our young full-backs played well. But then again, it’s clear that they need time to learn.

We got the feeling that Balotelli and Plea weren’t far from a red at times?

There was big commitment from the others. Sometimes, we can’t get a bit annoyed. Fouls by Mario, I didn’t see many? As for Plea, I don’t think that he is a player who goes out to hurt players.

You took off Mario Balotelli for the last quarter of an hour whereas you would normally leave him on for the 90 minutes, why was that?

Already, it wasn’t sure that he would play tonight, after the match on Thursday night. Compared with last season, he is playing back to back a lot more. In these matches that are close together, I prefer to take him off before the end and that he gives his all for the time he is there.

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