Philippe Clement has spoken to the media following the Europa League loss to Lyon. Here is what the manager had to say.

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Do you feel your side did themselves justice?

No, no for sure not. We didn't reward ourselves on two sides, so I think we started the game with good intentions, with good intensity, with good quality also. To put fire in the stands, to have an amazing European evening, and you have two 200% chances, the first two chances of the game, so you need to kill them off to get a special European night. It's like that against teams with this quality, you don't get so many chances. So that's disappointing, and it's also disappointing the way we got goals against with losing balls in the areas where we cannot lose the ball, and with a few times not good defending in our aggressivity and in the one-against-ones. Against top players, what they've shown today. But 1-4 is a really harsh result, if you see. In the end, it's the same amount of chances that both teams have, and we had more in the first half, but it was 1-3 with half-time, and that's the difference in quality, that they're more killing those moments and don't need many chances to score goals. So it's a big working point for us.

As you mentioned, the team really struggled to deal with Lyon's counter-attacks, were you tempted to change anything in the first half to try and combat that?

Yeah, but you can, with everybody, wait on your own 16, and they're good in that, like they showed also with the second goal, where they have a lot of technical players. And we had to chase the game also, and that's a big difference, if you start the game and you can score first one goal, or even two goals we should have scored, then they need to chase the game, and it's a totally different story. But we didn't do so, we didn't reward ourselves, so in the end you don't deserve more.

It's rare to see James Tavernier come off the pitch, can you just explain a little bit your thinking in terms of replacing him with half an hour to go?

Yeah, that everybody can be replaced, and Tav played already a lot of games, so not much to say about that. And Nana showed also last couple of weeks that he can be a really good replacement, and he's defensively very solid, so those are normal things. Like on the other side, players were changed, that is top football, and we're going to play more than 60 games this season, so it's impossible to play all these games. So in every good team in the world, our players change and sometimes start on the bench. It's normal, whoever it is.

You said there was the same amount of chances, but there's a difference in quality...

No, I cannot accept it. I don't accept losing games, and I don't accept the level that we are. I'm always ambitious to raise the level. I think the very positive thing is that you create that amount of chances against a really good team, with good football, and with good combination play. But we need to make the next step also, the next couple of months, to finish off those chances, and then you can go to another level, otherwise not.

After two games you've got three points, how do you assess where you are at the moment?

Oh, that I don't calculate too much now. You can say, maybe people would have said, if we had a draw against Malmo in an away game, having a draw in Europe and then having a draw here against Lyon, it would be really good, and we had one point less than now. So we don't need to calculate too much, and go in all the eight games for the three points, and play for that, what the team showed also today. But we need to take the scenario to our side, and so that's killing off the chances, if you go 1-0 or 2-0 in front today, you have a different scenario. That was the idea also, to annoy Lyon, that they could not play their normal game, and to create our chances and to finish them off early. So we didn't do that, they come in front, and then they can play on the counter-attack. The big thing is that we need to take these chances, and we need to of course also, in one-against-one defence, defend better than we did today. In some moments we did well, but not consistently.

Against this level of opposition, or a higher level of opposition, would you consider perhaps changing the system or the shape to possibly maybe go to a three at the back, for example?

Yeah, we can do, we did also last season, for example. In some European games, it's always a possibility. I don't see that it was the best way today, to hurt them also. And like I said, these evenings in front of your fans, if you can score a goal, hell breaks loose, and you can make them uncomfortable, that was the idea to do. We did a lot of good things, but the goalkeeper made a really good save for the chance of Tav, but he could have put the ball also sideways, where we have two players totally free to tap the ball in, and the ball of Vlaclav is also a tap-in to a free goal. So I don't think we can do much more than creating that kind of chances, I don't think you can create better chances than that, but you need to kill them off also.

How much are you going to have to try and pick up Connor after his mistake that led to one of the goals? Can you give us an update on Tom, he scored another big goal tonight, but came off at half-time?

Yeah, about Baz, I don't have any worry, but like we said, he's still a young lad, first time playing at this level and so many games in a row. So it's normal this season that it still will be with ups, and he had already a lot of ups, and sometimes a down, that's part of the story. With Tom, he felt something in the hamstring, so we could not take a risk with that.

Nadim Bajrami was very impressive at stages of the game tonight. Can the fans expect to see him playing in that No.10 role?

Yeah, for sure it's potentially a position that he can play, but we're also in a situation for the moment that Oscar Cortes is out, that Rabbi Matondo is out, and that we're not having a lot of left-wingers, so he can do that position really good, like he showed the last couple of weeks. So it has to do with the availability of other players also, these choices.

On the structure of the team, we have seen it in big games this season, like Kiev, Celtic, that it becomes pretty easy to get space and break on structurally. Do you feel that's fair in discussing that, and is it something you're considering possibly tightening up?

Of course we work on these details, and now you speak about those games and you don't speak about all the clean sheets that happened after. So there's been work done in that way. I don't think we had enough people behind the ball in the moments we get goals against, but we need to defend better in these once-against-once against top-quality players, and they showed their quality today. A quality that we don't face in Scottish football, that's a reality also. So it's a new experience for several of the players, and it's also not a habit to have these kind of duels against this top quality. So we need to raise that level with our European games and to become better in that. We're going to work hard on that. You can speak about structure and keeping a lot of people behind the ball, yes, but then your question will be why didn't you create anything and didn't you create any chance? At the end, if you're with 10 players in and around your 16, that's also the football that Lyon likes, because they're really good in the small spaces to make the difference. So it's finding a good balance in that.