Nice struggled but managed to hold on to the three points and the end of the match against Dijon. A tough opponent which was anything but a surprise for Lucien Favre, Coach of Le Gym.

Coach, it was a difficult game?
It was expected. There was no surprise for me today. Dijon are a well organized team, I knew that it would be difficult whichever system they decided to use. It’s hard for all teams. They beat Lyon 4-2, drew 1-1 with Monaco, lost in the last minute against Bordeaux, lead 3-1 with ten minutes to go at Guingamp … that shows what they are capable of. The have some good players, up front, they are dangerous, in the middle, they have lots of energy. They cover a lot of ground, they are very athletic. In that part of the game, we suffered. But we are happy to have won a very tough game. It could have turned out differently, they pushed us and we didn’t have many chances. We are missing some things. We struggled to find a balance between attack and defence.

You have 47 points, and are 7 points ahead of PSG with only one game left before the break…
As Guy Roux said, we are safe (laughs). 43 points already, it’s good, of course. We are focussing on ourselves and we need to keep working, to improve individually and collectively. We can’t work everything out though, there are some very strong competitors. This evening it was tough but not undeserved. We need to think about the next match because they come around very quickly. We don’t have too much time to recover for the match against Bordeaux. The difficulties of PSG? It isn’t my job to analyse them. I didn’t see their game against Guingamp, but, it is very difficult there. Every team has difficult periods, that is football. For me, PSG are always favourite over Nice.

Missing your usual wingers caused some difficulties for you in this match it seems…
These are things you need to get used to. Malang Sarr has played all season in a middle two or three. Then all of a sudden, he finds himself out wide. Le Marchand played his first game of the season which wasn’t exactly the plan. That gives you quite a few situations to manage. I think they managed well given that it was a game against a strong opposition.

« very difficult to find a balance »

It seemed that Mario Balotelli was more motivated collectively after the break. Did you speak to him at half-time?
He played at centre forward which needs movement so that the teammates know where to position themselves. There is a sacrifice made by Plea in this match, who isn’t really comfortable on the right wing, he did his job but it isn’t his preferred position. It was important to hold on, defend and get back into position. They put in lot of crosses, and have strong players on the ball with Sammaritano or Bela.

It is already the third brace for Balotelli in Ligue 1…
Plea won the penalty this evening. I don’t really count penalties in statistics (smiles). The second came from some great work out wide from Souquet who delivered a quality cross and Mario moved well to the near post. That got the team back into the saddle, because it was tough. From the bench, I don’t know if their penalty was deserved, I haven’t seen the replays. After our second goal, we needed to hold on because we were struggling to cause them problems. We were missing something in attack, we didn’t have the answers even with three attackers.

Balotelli has scored a lot at home, Plea away from home, is your challenge in 2017 to balance that out?
I have to be honest, it is very difficult to find a balance. Mario has scored braces against Marseille, Monaco, where we played with one striker. You have also seen that Alassane has scored nine of his ten goals when Balotelli wasn’t there. There you go… (smiles)

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