Adrian, could we say that the Gym is hurting?

Yes, that’s true. I never thought that we were out of this confidence issue. The players’ lack of confidence showed even more tonight. Especially when we play out from the back or when we try to slow the game down. We need to get back to work and try to rebuild that lost confidence. I’ve said it from day one. When we play in these kind of conditions we put pressure on ourselves and that’s when bad touches happen and passes are short. That explains quite a lot.

It looked like your side stopped playing after the break. How would you explain that?

Overall we just didn’t have a foothold on the game, even in the first half. It can’t have been enjoyable to watch, I’d go as far as saying it was awful. We had two chances and we were incredibly clinical, maybe against the run of play. We weren’t able to do what we wanted to do. Their pressing high up the pitch really caused us issues, and made us play badly. We should have played a more direct style of play. We had the options but it was more bout wanting to play forward rather than backwards. We gave our opponents the chance to press high and put us under pressure. To make them struggle we needed to play the ball into their half a lot quicker but we didn’t do that. We didn’t play the ball out from the back well enough. We just weren’t in the right tempo.

Can you explain your decision to play in a 3-4-3 formation without a real number nine tonight?

It’s the same system we’ve been using for the past few weeks. It was only the personnel that changed. With Gouiri and Dolberg being out, I thought that if we controlled the game Rony Lopes could have helped us with the build-up play. He’s comfortable playing in small pockets of space and linking up play. Unfortunately the were the game planned out wasn’t the way we’d hoped for.

Are the European spots still a possibility for the end of the season?

I’ve said since I took over that my only goal is the next game. I’ll let the journalists and whoever else is involved think about the end of the season or the European cups. My only preoccupation is to see how I can bring confidence back to the team and that’ll be difficult. We need to hold on to what works and tonight not much did apart from how clinical we were with the few chances we had.

Your side seemed to lack energy, does the break come at the right time for you?

We’re really tired after this period with games every three days. It’s not an excuse but we can’t rotate too much because we have so many injuries. When your body is made to work as much as it has for months and with the added psychological pressure, it’s tough to deal with, you start to doubt even more and you stop having a clear mind.

Why did Youcef Atal come off at half time?

Youcef came off as precaution. You know the injuries he’s had recently and he felt a slight tweak and after speaking to the doctor we decided to take him off and not risk him.

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