“I think we deserved to win. We played well. In the first half we had some chances but unfortunately we didn’t score. In the second half, after we made the changes, which were also important, we finally managed to score.”
“You need to be patient because tonight Monaco waited for us to lose the ball so they could hit us on the break. So you need to be well organised and be calm when playing out from the back.”
“I’m happy with lots of things tonight. The chances we had, the energy the team played with throughout the game. When we lost the ball, we reacted immediately to win it back. We did that really well against a good team.”
“I was the designated penalty taker tonight and Lucas (Paquetá) had just come on. Maybe he wanted to take it but I told him that I had to. In any case, we didn’t argue over it, he just went to get the ball to give it to me.”
“I’m used to taking penalties. That’s how I take them, I already took some in Ligue 1 when I was at Angers. I’d never taken one for Lyon but I’m used to taking them so it wasn’t a big deal.”
“In my opinion, performances had been good but we weren’t getting the results we wanted despite playing well. So we’ve maintained our level of performance at home in front of the fans, who were electric. There were 50,000 here tonight so we’re really proud to have won in front of them and to be able to move up the Ligue 1 table.”
“In the first half, we tried to switch from one side of the pitch to the other a lot, to make the ball do the work. I think they were tired in the second half, which is why we found some spaces. We deserved to win today. It was a tough game against a good team. The three points are the most important thing.”
“It’s good (for morale) and for the supporters too. They created a fantastic atmosphere for us. 50,000 people in the stadium, it was great to see them like that. We’re fifth in the league now, which is good.”
“Lyon are a very good team, they’re well organised. Today we had players out through injury and suspension, so we decided to play 4-4-2. I think it worked well, especially defensively, but we weren’t as dangerous as we would’ve liked with the ball, apart from on the counterattack. Lyon had more control of the game but they weren’t that dangerous. The turning point of the match was the penalty, which I think was correctly given, and Lyon deserved their win.”
“Our plan was to stay compact and to limit the space between the lines so that we could then play on the counterattack. We got into some good positions but little things made the difference, some passes and touches here and there. We came close to scoring from Gelson Martins’ shot and Wissam (Ben Yedder)’s cross. If these little details had gone our way, maybe we would’ve scored first. So we have to keep working on these things.”
“Ligue 1 is very competitive this season, the top of the table is really tight. We lost tonight but life goes on, we have to move forward. We had a positive sequence of results in the last six matches. We’ll pick ourselves back up and continue our progression.”
“Alexander Nübel is getting better and better. He made some superb saves, especially in the first half. He’s in good shape, he’s got more and more confidence in himself, which is important for a goalkeeper and the rest of the team. It’s good when a goalkeeper is able to make difficult saves.”
Youssouf Fofana
“We’re obviously disappointed. But I’d say we have mixed feelings as we could have scored if we’d been a little more precise on a few occasions. After that, the game was partly decided by the penalty, which was a bit of a mental setback. It wasn’t easy to recover from that. They were more pragmatic than us.”
“We’re AS Monaco and, although we have to be humble, we start any match against any team looking to win. We were above Lyon before the game. Tonight we played with the firepower we had at our disposal but it wasn’t enough. We were well set up, we had some promising moments but it just didn’t happen for us. This type of match is decided by little details and that’s exactly what happened.”
Ruben Aguilar
“We’re really disappointed as this isn’t the result we were hoping for. I’m a bit frustrated because we were defending well and were well organised. So there are some positives to take from the game despite the result. Now we have another important game coming up in the Europa League on Thursday, so we’ll get back to work quickly and start preparing for the trip to Eindhoven.”
“We can’t forget that Lyon are a really good team in this league. We had our chances tonight. We were well organised and the penalty totally changed the game. We knew that the match would be decided by the small details. We’ll go back to training and lift ourselves back up as quickly as possible. We were on a good run and there’s no reason we can’t go on another one.”