Nabil on Cardiff test

Nabil Bentaleb stressed the importance of taking one game at a time as we prepare to host Cardiff City on Sunday.

The young midfielder was a second half substitute in Thursday night’s Europa League victory against FC Dnipro – a result that ensured our continued participation in Europe ahead of this weekend’s swift return to Premier League duty.

And with a hectic schedule on the horizon, the 19-year-old says we must be methodical and clinical in our approach.

“It’s a very big game against Cardiff,” he said. “We have a really hard month coming up and we’re going to make sure we treat every game like it’s a cup final.

“Every game is a tough game but we believe in ourselves. We have to stay focussed and we can’t just be happy about the Dnipro result and forget about the future games. We have to keep working to try and win every game.”

As Nabil alluded to, Thursday’s result gave us a sizeable boost after the disappointment of last weekend’s Premier League reverse at Norwich.

The battling central midfielder was delighted with our second half comeback, as we overturned a 2-0 aggregate deficit to progress into the round of 16 and a glamour tie against Benfica.

“I think we showed great character and fantastic team spirit,” he added. “After we went 1-0 down we didn’t give up, we kept on fighting and we believed in ourselves. We believed we could overturn the situation and we showed what we can do.”