Garde: We wanted more goals

Lyon boss Remi Garde hopes his team will not regret only netting once in their 1-0 Champions League win at home over APOEL on Tuesday.

A stubborn and defensive APOEL held firm for most of the round-of-16 first-leg clash at Stade de Gerland, but Alexandre Lacazette’s deflected 58th-minute effort proved to be enough for the hosts.

Despite taking an advantage into the second leg – to be played in Nicosia on March 7 – Garde fears only scoring once at home could cost his side.

“The game went as we expected. We tried to dictate the pace and tried to ensure we didn’t concede an away goal,” Garde said.

“We would have liked to score more goals – hopefully we won’t regret that in the second leg.”

“They will have to come at us, which will give us chances on the counter-attack. We’ll need to be strong mentally and make sure we are prepared.”

After struggling to break down the visitors’ defence, Lyon went ahead when Lacazette, given a surprise start, struck.

Garde believes his team still have work to do in the tie and said they lacked energy in the second half.

“We lacked freshness in the second half. We needed a bit of a boost to keep up the tempo of the first half,” he said.

“My squad is at full steam, I can change things round from one match to another and I’ll keep doing so.”

“We’re just at half-time of our tie – nothing is settled yet.”

Cypriots APOEL rarely threatened in an attacking sense, and were without a shot on goal until the dying stages of the encounter.

APOEL coach Ivan Jovanovic said he was happy with the result, but added it was far from his team’s best performance.

“We are actually quite satisfied with the result. We have played better than we did tonight but often your performance is affected by your opponents, too,” the Serbian said.

“They were strong, worked hard and did not allow us to play our normal game.”