Jittery Lyon set for 'decisive week'

Difficult decisions
Should the six-time French champions preserve their two-point cushion over FC Girondins de Bordeaux in the final two rounds of league matches, and complete a first cup triumph since 1973, the current campaign would go down as the most successful in their history. Yet Bordeaux's dramatic victory at Olympique de Marseille on Sunday sent a chill in the direction of Stade de Gerland and left Lyon coach Alain Perrin with some difficult decisions to make. The Rhone club play third-placed AS Nancy-Lorraine just three days after the visit of Ligue 2 side Sedan, but Perrin has ruled out fielding a second-string team in the club's first semi-final appearance for a decade.

'Decisive week'
"We want to qualify for the final so there will be no reserve team," he said. "I will rotate the side a little to keep some players fresh because our aim is to win the double, but we don't have the squad to make wholesale changes." Perrin confirmed that Fabio Grosso, Anthony Réveillère and Hatem Ben Arfa are all in contention, and might find it difficult to resist starting with Karim Benzema who has scored six of the team's eight goals in this season's competition. "This might be a decisive week in our season, but before thinking about Nancy we must focus on Sedan," Perrin stressed. "They're an organised team that pass the ball well and they'll be 150 per cent motivated against us."

Major scalp
Sedan, currently eighth in the second tier, accounted for Bordeaux in the quarter-finals, and their captain Romain Sartre – a former Lyon player – is relishing the opportunity to claim another major scalp. "We'll need to produce the match of our lives to reach the final," said the 25-year-old defender, who joined Sedan in 2005 having graduated from Lyon's youth academy. "It will be fantastic for me to return to Stade de Gerland, and everybody is looking forward to the challenge. We've got nothing to lose."