As PSG coach Guy Lacombe heaped praise upon the Derry fans for the atmosphere they had created two weeks ago at the Brandywell, the first signs of City's travelling support were to be seen in the French capital.

Perhaps predictably, most of those who had travelled early for tonight's game seemed to have other things on their minds than the traditional tourist sites as one tabloid journalist, charged with tracking a few down for a colour piece, found to his cost during a fruitless hour-long wait at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

By this evening, though, some 2,000 are expected to desert the city's bars in order to gather at the Parc des Princes where perhaps 20 times that number of locals will be present to witness what is viewed locally as a must-win game.

Given the club was founded by supporters frustrated in 1970 their city did not have an appropriately powerful club to follow, the fans occupy an especially important position at PSG and Lacombe knows they may demand a high price of him if his side fails to progress to the group stages of this Uefa Cup.

The build-up has been less than ideal. After weeks of rumbling trouble behind the scenes and several days of public acrimony it appeared yesterday French international Vikash Dhorasoo is on his way out of the club. There is not too much sympathy for the midfielder here as few believe he has shown much commitment to the team since arriving from Milan last year. Still, Lacombe will know only too well that for managers, the dumping of a big name and the achievement of bad results are a hazardous combination.

As if the Dhorasoo debacle wasn't bad enough, yesterday came the news Kalou and Bernard Mendy had been embroiled in a punch up at the club's training ground on Monday when Pedro Pauletta had to intervene.

Lacombe declined to talk about either the fight or Dhorasoo yesterday but Stephen Kenny made light of the former, observing such incidents aren't unheard of when his own players go training.

"That's a normal day at Derry City," he laughed. "We've quite a volatile group and at training every tackle is contested. With a passionate group things sometimes boil over so I wouldn't count it as an advantage for us that two of them had a row."

It is, however, the absence of any obvious passion that many observers blamed for PSG's poor start to the French league season. The solid performance at the Brandywell, however, seemed to spark a sustained improvement and four points from the two league games played since then has eased the pressure on the players and coach.

"After the first game, we could say 0-0 was a good result because Derry are not a bad team with some good players," said skipper Pauletta at the team's training ground yesterday. "But, in competitions like the Uefa Cup, it is important to score away from home and we did not do that and it could cause us problems . . . It would be good to score an early goal because that would relieve the pressure on us. Of course, the most important thing is to win but the sooner we score the better."

The Portuguese international, comfortably the league top scorer here last season, denied even witnessing Monday's altercation between his team-mates although the detail of the incident contained in newspaper reports strongly suggest he is being diplomatic just as he was yesterday when he maintained, "It is not a difficult time to be captain."

It may not be likely but if things don't go to plan tonight, one suspects it will be a difficult time to be virtually anything at this troubled giant of a club and Dhorasoo may well have company through the exit door.