Smith joy at 'excellent' Lyon win

Olympique Lyonnais coach Alain Perrin could not criticise his players' efforts despite their second successive 3-0 defeat in UEFA Champions League Group E. The home loss against Rangers FC, courtesy of goals by Lee McCulloch, Daniel Cousin and DaMarcus Beasley, meant that while the French champions have no points from two games the Scottish side have a maximum six, leaving manager Walter Smith praising a result he "couldn't have imagined".

Alain Perrin, Lyon coach
It's difficult to explain what happened tonight, but that's football. If you look at the statistics, I can't blame my players, even if we could have won more duels in the penalty area. Of course it is more difficult to qualify now, we must rely on other results in the group and we will have to win back the points we have lost at home, starting with [VfB] Stuttgart in the next game. We were aware of Rangers' qualities but we actually defended well, apart from at corners. There are a lot of disappointed players in the dressing room tonight, but with this nightmare scenario it's the staff's job to keep the result in context. We must now look forward to the next Ligue 1 game against [FC Girondins de] Bordeaux.

Walter Smith, Rangers manager
We had an excellent result tonight but we had to battle hard for it. We asked ourselves questions about our capacity for playing away but we couldn't have imagined we would win against Lyon - we didn't expect it, but we worked very hard for it. The result is one of our biggest in recent years and nobody could have imagined this scenario. I don't think we would be insulting anyone by saying [FC] Barcelona are the best team in the group, but there will be a battle between the other teams for the other qualifying spot. Tonight it was important to show that we could compete at the top level in Europe.