Adrian Ursea spoke in the post-match press conference after OGC Nice’s defeat against Monaco at the stade Louis II (2-1).

Coach, despite the defeat do you take some positives from your second half performance for future games?

Yes. Our team spirit was also present in the first half but we had a very good Monaco side against us who will finish in the top four in my opinion. I though our team played well we tried to get the ball down, defend together and attack together even if we were disappointing in front of goal. But what I saw tonight was encouraging.

Do you have any regrets?

We always have some regrets. But we saw that Monaco had quite a few chances. They press so well and they’re very well organised and defend in one system and attack in another. They change and you can see they’re a well oiled machine. But I’ve watched a lot of their games and I’ve rarely seen Monaco struggle like they did tonight.

What did you think of the Todibo – Saliba centre back partnership?

For their first game together it was really interesting. Especially for such young players. Playing like that against Volland and Ben Yedder at 20 years old was impressive. It’s a real positive for what’s to come and I’m really happy with what I saw.

Why did you bring Todibo off?

Just as precaution because we’re still seeing what his fitness is like. It was his first game for Nice and he’s been training for two months. We don’t want to take too many risks with him so we decided to take him off. We’ll need everyone going forward.

Both goals came through passages of play that were avoidable: What would you say to avoid it happening again?

I would always say that you learn from failures. We’ll look at the video and hope to make sure it doesn’t happen again. As coach you don’t want to say that. It’s partly due to the youth but we’re professionals and we want those mistakes to be a one off. Football is a game of details and we need to be aware of them to make games turn our way.

Why did you make two changes at half time?

It wasn’t a punishment. In Dan’s case I wanted to bring pace on. Myziane has been training well for a few weeks and I thought we could get in behind Caio Henrique and we scored quickly. As for Alexis he’d been carded and was close to a second. I didn’t want to go down to ten men.

Kasper Dolberg and Amine Gouiri struggled…

Amine was a bit isolated on the left wing. Same for Kasper. When you’re facing Badiashile, Maripan or Disasi it’s tough especially up front on his own. He probably needed more help going forward to be able to link up play. But for a while now we’ve been focusing on attacking play. We’re trying to find solutions. We found solutions by playing two up front with Amine close to him. Now we changed again and he was isolated. We hope we can find solutions because he can be better than he was tonight.

Are you now looking behind you?

We could say that we’re looking behind but we’re just looking at the next game. What I saw tonight gives me confidence for the future. We’re in a position that we shouldn’t be in so it’s up to us to improve. But we’re in a tough season and that’s the way our team is at the moment. It is quite tough to have these periods though.

Does what you saw today make you want to continue with four defenders?

Yes it was reassuring. But it’s also due to the players that we didn’t have before. Today those types of players enable us to stay with a back four. We won’t hesitate to stay like that.

Did you see the supporters’ banners at the training ground?

Of course. We know that the fans are behind us and that they’re trying to help us in different ways. We’re always listening to them. Personally whenever I can I like to tell the team the support they have from the fans. We sense that they are there. It’s up to us to repay them by playing well and most importantly getting the results they’re happy with.

---