Ronald, with this victory, is the race for third place on again?
We already knew the reult of Nancy’s game ( 2-1 defeat to Bordeaux) and we really wanted to win this game. We needed it in the race for third place. We held our destiny in our hands for this game and we tried to win as best we could. The coach told us to play without any fear and most importantly to play our game. We’ve been playing with the brakes on recently and it doesn’t work. We played more freely in the second half and came out at the end with the win.

What happened at half time that explains such a turn around?
We didn’t play that badly in the first half. We tried but Lorient were well in place and managed to hit us on the counter attack a few times. We managed to remain solid defensively, unfortunately they got the penalty which hurt us just before half time. The coach changed our system around and brought on Djibril (Cissé) making it a three man attacking line. I think all that knocked them out of their rhythm. Especially as our defensive midfielders Modeste (M’Bami) and Bolo (Zenden), gave us more solutions and Samir (Nasri) had a lot of space as the Lorient players hesitated in closing him down. That’s where we made the difference. We kept looking for the free man and it paid off. We equalised and we had many chances, too many maybe as I thought they would hit us on the counter attack. But we didn’t give them too many chances and Mamadou’s (Niang) goal set us free.

"When we have our full squad available, there are not many teams that can cause us problems "

It seemed like the team had refound it’s game in the second half …
When we are more mobile, we have much more options. Especially as Kanga (Akalé) was in top form, Mamad’ played well and Djibril brought us a lot of pace. When we are playing well up front and we manage to hit the target we can be very dangerous. We plaed well as a block. This week the coach spoke to us a lot about individual work and made us look at everything we’ve done since the start of the season. We all let it sink in that there are only 8 games to go and that everyone had to react.

During the first round of games, the draw against Lorient (0-0) was the start of a great run of games for OM, is this going to happen again?
I hope so. We have seven games left with away games where we mustn’t drop any points all the time taking a maximum of points from our home games. Afterwards we’ll have to see if Nancy slip up. Let us get into third place and then we’ll see if we can get any higher.

Last season’s run in (six wins in the last six games) was breathtaking, do you think you can do it again this season?
Of course ! We have much more potential and quality than we did last year. We’ve shown that over the last three months, despite the last few difficult weeks. We’re going to get back our injured players and with our full squad available, there are not many teams that can cause us problems on one of our good days. If we concentrate and give everything during the run in we’ll be ok.