Francesco Farioli spoke to the press following his side’s slender 1-0 loss away to Lyon on Friday night. 

Coach, we just heard from your president Jean-Pierre Rivère who was extremely upset with the refereeing tonight. You already spoke about this last week against Monaco. What are your feelings this evening?
I think the President has already said it all, there's not much to add. Everyone has eyes to see what's happening, there are slow-motion replays, so everyone can make up their own minds. The rules are quite clear. Then, everyone is free to interpret the images as they wish. Tonight was my 101st match on the bench and I've never been booked for bad behaviour. I always try to be polite, respectful and understanding of the various situations in any given match. But that doesn't mean we can to accept everything.

Concerning your team’s performance, there were certain refereeing decisions, like against Monaco, but your team tried to play good football, without getting any reward. How do  you explain it? 
We've been trying to play good football since the start of the season. Sometimes we tend to forget how far we've come and how far we still have to go. Tonight, we're still second on the ladder with 39 points, and we're still in the running for the Coupe de France. I don't think the team is here by chance, the statistics speak for themselves. As in the first meeting this season, we came up against a very good Lyon team, well-organised and with a passionate home crowd. We came here, shot 20 times at goal and conceded just one shot on target to our opponents. We won nine corners. But we're going home with zero goals and zero points. It's the second time in a row. We're creating a lot but unfortunately we're not getting much in return. All that has to give us the strength and energy to reverse the trend and get what we deserve. This team is where it deserves to be. Maybe we even deserve a few more points. We've been lacking a little something over the last few months. There's a certain amount of luck involved, but we also have our share of responsibility. Now we turn our attention to training on Tuesday and the upcoming games we need to prepare so that we can end the season in a manner worthy of the way we started it.

Youssouf Ndayishimiye was very unhappy when he was substituted. Have you spoken to him since the end of the game? 
I’m happy that he is upset to come off. Every player should want to play for 90 minutes every game. Tonight he was booked and with all the emotion, comes the frustration. After the game, he understood why we made the change.

Do you think the absentees, starting with Dante, played a role on the outcome of tonight’s game?
Dante is a very important player for this team, as are all the others who were unable to play tonight due to injury. Jeremie Boga and Terem Moffi only returned to Nice yesterday. As I said in the pre-match press conference, I hope we won't regret these missing players. Our team needs everyone's energy if we are to reach a certain level. We leave nothing to chance and it's clear that Dante's absence, which we already paid for in the final 30 minutes against Monaco last week, weighed heavily this evening. He's a player with a lot of technical qualities and character, and he brings a lot to the team. But apart from that absence, the performance was good, both from the first XI and the substitutes. Everyone did what they had to do. I regret not picking up any points tonight. In the two games against Lyon, we have deserved six points, but unfortunately we only got one. We'll try to use that as fuel for the rest of our season.

Hugo Rondet