“We the staff try to prepare the players to win. But there are people around who are saying: ‘How many goals are you going to score against Anderlecht etc?’ so maybe subconsciously they think that all they need to do is step on the pitch to win the game,” said Blanc, who saw Zlatan Ibrahimovic cancel out Demy de Zeeuw’s opener, with the goals coming just two minutes apart in the second half in the French capital.

“We can’t do anything if people say that we are playing brilliantly. In my pre-match press conference I said that this was our most important match in the group and everyone had a smile on their face, but it was the truth.

“You [journalists] do your job and you do it quite well because you give out praise when a team is playing well. But we need to be wary of that because you win games on the pitch, not before the match has started.

“If we listen to everything that is being said about us just now, all we need to do is turn up to win. And what do our opponents do? That gives them more motivation.”

The 47-year-old Blanc accepted that the absence of injured record signing Edinson Cavani might have been partly responsible for his team’s lack of a killer touch against an Anderlecht side that ended the match with 10 men after the sending-off of Sacha Kljestan late on.

But he felt that the visitors fully deserved what was their first point in the group.

“Paris were too average to win the game. That is the reality. But I think Anderlecht were brave, well organised, and deserved the result, while we were too average. We had six or seven chances but it is difficult to score goals, even against a supposedly weaker side.

“Now the next game is decisive, just as tonight’s was. But we are in a good position,” he added, ahead of the meeting at the end of the month with the Greek champions, who beat Benfica 1-0 in the night’s other game to go clear in second place.