At the end of his side’s draw at Reims (1-1), Patrick Vieira didn’t hold back in his criticism of his team’s performance. 

Patrick, the Gym got away with one tonight…

Yes, we can say that it’s a point that came from heaven. We played a very, very average match. I think that the set-up that we had at the start of this match didn’t allow us to express what we wanted to put in place. Tactically, I may have put the team into difficulty, we struggled. We were distracted, it was our third match in one week. We suffered physically. We weren’t good at all, I admit that. Even in terms of our spirit, I felt that we were lacking. They wanted it more than us, we lost a lot of battles, the second ball. To leave here with one point, I think that the Rémois can be very disappointed.

Taking off Malang Sarr before the 30 minute mark?

It was a tactical choice. I wanted to move to four at the back, I had several options to do so, I chose this one. I don’t know if it was the best one but I needed to change something because we weren’t creating chances, we didn’t have possession of the ball.

Rémi Walter came off the bench to take a penalty in the final seconds. Was this planned?

We had planned our penalty takers. It should have been Youcef (Atal) or Danilo, but Rémi was fresher than the others, that’s why we decided to make the change and let him take it.

Your attacking difficulties have once again been visible this evening…

Yes, it wasn’t great but we didn’t create many chances. We were restless, Allan (Saint-Maximin) up-front lacked support. It was very complicated for him. We know that we need to strengthen in attack, we need more options. I have always said that I have been happy with the squad’s morale, but this evening, we were average even in that domain. But we continued to push and one handball helped us. I will continue to work with the players that I have and we will come out the other side.

Your team really went for it at the end of the game!

We didn’t have the choice. The change of system pushed the players further forward. The second half was better on the whole and in the last twenty minutes, we were more brave, although there was still a lot of waste. Luck was on our side. We have a pretty tight squad at the moment and the players that come on need to bring something to the game, and that’s what happened with the players we brought on.

In the end, you bring this week to an end positively with five points!

Yes, while playing two game away from home against two sides (Monaco and Reims) who needed points. This result pleases me especially having seen our content in this match.

---