Happy with his team's performance, especially in the first half, Patrick Vieira wanted to dedicate Sunday's 3-1 win at Saint-Etienne "to Fred (Gioria) and all his family".

After dominating the first half, did you think the win might slip away from you after the interval?

No, I didn't get that impression. Our second half wasn't as good, especially after (Denis) Bouanga came on. He's got a lot of qualities and caused us a lot of problems. We dug in, defended, and waited for the storm to pass. But apart from conceding a goal, we were never in too much danger. It's true that they had a lot of the ball, because we sat back a bit too much, but overall, we were quite solid.

You set up your team with three centre-backs. Were you happy with that formation?

Yes, Jordan (Lotomba) and Hassane (Kamara) on the flanks have so much energy that they can defend while also giving us width. In midfield, we were also really promising in terms of keeping the ball. We tried to create an overload in the middle of the pitch. Collectively, it was a very good performance, especially in the first half-an-hour.

'A SQUAD TO ALSO BE AMBITIOUS IN EUROPE'

You've started a marathon run of games (7 in 22 days) with a win…

It's always better to win for your confidence. Everyone says that when you win, you recover more quickly. But more than the win, there was the performance that I thought was pretty good. Myziane (Maolida) and Danilo, who's coming back from injury, and Dan (Ndoye) came on late in the game and contributed a lot to the team. We're going to have Jeff (Reine-Adélaïde) back before the end of the week and Youcef (Atal) and Alexis (Claude-Maurice) will be back on Tuesday. Going forward, we'll have more options and that's encouraging. We'll have a squad to be ambitious in Europe. We want to do well, also to represent French football. We'll give our all to put in a good performance.

Do you feel a game plan is coming together?

Not everything was perfect, but the first half-hour was good: we want to keep hold of the ball, control the game and dictate the tempo. In those first thirty minutes we caused them a lot of problems. We know we still have to improve. We have to play like that for 90 minutes, not just half-an-hour. That's where there's room to improve, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

'BENITEZ’S MISTAKE? THEY’RE THE RISKS WE TAKE'

When you look at the table this is a great result…

Yes, it’s good if you look at the points we’ve got, but long-term it’s the way we play that will decide whether we’ll challenge near the top of the table or not.

What are your thoughts on Walter Benitez’s error in the lead-up to Saint-Etienne’s goal?

They’re the risks we take. In all the games we’ve played so far Walter has been able to create space for us to play out from the back… One small mistake won’t change anything: we’ll carry on playing this way and we won’t change our philosophy.

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