Perrin praises Lyon teamwork

Olympique Lyonnais coach Alain Perrin hailed an "important win" as goals from Fábio Santos and Karim Benzema ensured a victory at VfB Stuttgart that gets them off the mark in UEFA Champions League Group E and takes them to within four points of FC Barcelona and Rangers FC. Stuttgart have now lost all three games and coach Armin Veh admitted his team struggled to create chances.

Armin Veh, Stuttgart coach
After Saturday [when Stuttgart lost 4-1 to Hamburger SV] we were determined not to concede another early goal against strong opposition. That worked out well at first, then we wanted to create our own chances, but that did not go so well. I told my team at half-time they should keep the game goalless as long as possible so we could have a chance to win in the final phase of the match, but then we conceded a goal in a way that's typical of us at the moment. After that, it became really difficult for us to change the flow of things. Lyon were the better team over the entire 90 minutes, they demonstrated the individual class of their players and absolutely deserved to win. At the moment we are not capable of creating chances against such a strong team. Of course, we did better than at Hamburg but that's not saying much. We improved, but we have to say this was not good enough.

Alain Perrin, Lyon coach
It was an important win for us today because we knew Stuttgart would put us under pressure. We did well to withstand that pressure for 20 minutes, than we went on the attack and had some good counters. But it was not an easy match and was only over when we converted our chances in the second half. There was always some uncertainty, until then, that maybe we had already missed our chances in the first half, but then we had more chances in the second. The team worked as a unit today, they defended as a collective unit and attacked together. We said before the match it would be important to overtake Stuttgart in the table today, but we have to confirm that in a fortnight when they come to visit us. However, progressing to the first knockout round is not in our hands at the moment.