Patrick Vieira spoke at the press conference after his side’s defeat at the hands of Marseille (1-0).

Coach, how would you analyse this derby?

It’s a bit like the first match: on the whole, you can’t say that Marseille were better but at the end of the day, we lose. There is a lot of frustration, but that’s the way it is. We can always do better. We had situations where we had quite a lot of technical waste, 2-3 times when we played it very badly and made the wrong choices. We struggled to make chances but on the other hand, we weren’t really put in danger either. We conceded the goal from a chance where we lacked a bit of experience. Patrick (Burner) was battling with Mario who finished well and wrong footed  Walter. The difference came from this header but Mario was rather inexistent in the game. It was well played from him.

Is it frustrating to see him score against Le Gym?

We weren’t focused on Mario but on the Marseille forwards. Be it him, or another who scores, it makes no difference.

Were you surprised by the intensity of Marseille?

The strength of this team is its midfield. Sanson and Lopez played very well this evening and for me, Marseille’s results are due to the quality of these two players, because they add rhythm, can defend and push forward. They knew that we are a team that likes to play out from the back, so we were expecting a press like that. Defensively, things went pretty well for us, Christophe, Dante and Malang played very well. We had moments where we could have done better to clear the ball but we caused them problems. When you look at the chances, it was pretty poor from both sides.

You changed your system after an hour of the game…

As soon as we conceded the goal, we needed to try to change something. We moved Saint-Maximin out left so that he could bring a bit of his pace. He was interesting but made the wrong choice on too many occasions, too many technical errors. He struggled to play with his teammates, just like the team. In attack, we lacked a bit, but this season, we have shown that we can win games even when scoring very few goals.

Is Le Gym in its rightful place (9th in L1)?

The future will tell us. We are struggling to pick up back-to-back wins. We have had good periods, and others less so.

Do we know the nature of the injury to Christophe Jallet?

Not yet, we are waiting for tomorrow.

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