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Adrian Ursea: “Frustrating”

Check out extracts from Adrian Ursea’s press conference following Le Gym’s defeat against Lyon (1-4).

Coach, is it frustrating for you to say that it’s individual mistakes once again that complicated the match?

Everyone was able to see what happened. Of the four goals we conceded this evening, we gifted them three of them. It’s frustrating. We have been through these situations in the past. What I want to take away this evening, is that we also produced some interesting things against a good  Lyon side. There were moments in which we dominated.

How can you prevent things like these errors from repeating?

You need to try to get the players back into the context of the game and to make sure that they are aware of the situation so that they can make better decisions. In the situation that we find ourselves in, when we are playing with pressure, it’s not a positive pressure that helps you to push forward, rather it pulls you back slightly. But once again, I will repeat it: I prefer to take the positives. In order to move forward, that’s what we need to rely on.

Lyon’s game plan was to wait for Le Gym’s errors. Does that say a lot about the current state of the team?

We know that Lyon are incredibly effective on the counter-attack. We had studied them, we warned the players. For the third goal, which killed the game off, it was just a lack of concentration. We were attacking to try to get the equaliser and we hesitated for two seconds and they proved fatal. We needed to have greater concentration and better control of the game in those situations to be able to avoid that kind of thing.

What gives you hope defensively?

We haven’t played many matches in this formation. It seemed to me that our defence was struggling when we wanted to defend the large spaces. It’s due to the fact that we took risks because at 2-1, we really wanted to get back into the game. We started the second half in an interesting way. But to defend the large spaces, you need to put in place other mechanisms in order to avoid this kind of surprise, to make better choices when we attack, find solutions and control the opposition’s counter-attacks. That’s where we were caught out. But all defences have issues when defending large spaces.

The connection between Gouiri and Lopes was one of the positives of the evening?

Yes. It’s definitely one of the positives that we need to take from the game and upon which we need to build. This evening, the match is over, we will turn the page and look to Wednesday. We are competitors and this not particularly pleasant run of form has had an impact on the confidence of the players and on our risk taking. Now we need to live with the situation, to do our best and to make minor changes.