France have work to do before Euro 2016 after struggling past Cameroon

Time will tell if it is a good or bad thing but, at the moment, with France we get what we expect. Monday night's 3-2 friendly win against Cameroon in Nantes, the first step in Les Bleus' Euro 2016 preparations, provided exactly that.

We expected Didier Deschamps' men to be impressive offensively and they were. Kingsley Coman started on the right wing, in the absence of Antoine Griezmann (not yet with the squad after playing in the Champions League final for Atletico) and Manchester United forward Anthony Martial (rested), and was on fire in the first half with a wonderful assist for Blaise Matuidi's and some great runs.

West Ham winger Dimitri Payet started on the left and even if he was actually rarely on the left, he was a constant source of danger and netted the winning goal with a wonderful, trademark free kick in the last minute of the game.

Meanwhile, up front, Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud scored for the fifth times in his last six matches for France with another one touch finish after a sublime Paul Pogba assist. He has now 15 goals in his 48 caps (25 as a starter) for Les Bleus. Karim Benzema, who will miss the tournament, had the same tally after 48 caps (33 as a starter though)...

Scoring goals is one thing and France have been pretty good at that lately (netting three against Netherlands; four against Russia in March; three again on Monday) but you also need to defend.

We expected France to struggle at the back and they did as well. Indeed, with Raphael Varane, Kurt Zouma, Jeremy Mathieu and even Aymeric Laporte all injured, plus Mamadou Sakho looking unlikely to get a call despite being cleared after his diet pills issue, France's defence has been decimated.

That saw Lyon defender Samuel Umtiti get a call up to the 23-man squad but there was also room for 30-year-old Adil Rami, who was not even on the reserve list initially. Rami was preferred to Eliaquim Mangala to start on Monday against Cameroon, alongside Laurent Koscielny. But, three years after his last cap, the Sevilla defender was dreadful.

At least, he acknowledged it. "I have made some mistakes. It was hard to get back into the preparation and I am still getting to know my teammates," he said afterwards on French television. There is no doubt that he put extra pressure on himself before the game and didn't cope with it well at all.

You can see why Deschamps started him. Koscielny plays as a left-sided centre-back, which doesn't change if Rami is with him. However, if Mangala (who is left footed) plays then it means that Koscielny has to move to the right centre-back position. Deschamps will have to decide how to get the best out of his defenders and, on the evidence of Monday's performance, Rami has not scored many points.

Even with everybody available, France's defence has been a worry in the last two seasons -- though that might come from the fact that the midfield is also a bit of a concern.

We expected that Les Bleus would struggle in midfield and they did. There was not much going forward: Matuidi scored the first goal; Pogba gifted Giroud the second, but from a defensive position; while Lassana Diarra, who started as the holding midfielder, was far from his best, struggling in the tackle and not protecting his back four enough.

Deschamps spoke to Pogba five times on the touchline during the first half to get his positioning right. It never really worked, while Matuidi clearly seemed more interested in going forward than doing any defending. For the coach, it would not have been very reassuring to see those three fail to dominate the midfield against a side like Cameroon.

At half-time, Diarra was replaced by N'Golo Kante and France went from a 4-3-3 to a 4-2-3-1, with Matuidi and Kante sitting and Pogba as the No. 10. This is Deschamps' Plan B. It didn't really work any better than Plan A, but it's better to have two plans than one.

Finally, we expected France to show a few moments of pure brilliance and we also had that. Pogba's cross for Giroud to score the second goal was sublime. First his footwork, then his vision and finally the long curling delivery: everything was perfect. We all know what the Juventus midfielder is capable of, but now he needs to do a bit more of it.

However, the star of the show was Payet. As Cameroon equalised to make it 2-2 with just added time remaining, it looked like France would start their Euro 2016 adventure on the back of a disappointing performance and result. Yet Payet saved the day with a trademark free kick.

There are plenty of contenders, but it is easy to argue that Payet is the best free kick taker in the world at the moment. The trajectory of his strikes is incredible and he has now scored two unbelievable free kicks in back-to-back games with France (Russia and Cameroon) which no one had ever done before.

With Payet in the team, set pieces around the box have almost become penalties for France! Indeed, he scored six of the 24 free kicks he took in 2016 (25 percent conversion rate). No one else in football, not even Lionel Messi, has a similar ratio -- with the average around five percent.

To sum up, France's friendly with Cameroon was as expected: eventful and thrilling, but not really very reassuring. If Deschamps' men have to score three goals in each game to win the Euros, they obviously won't do it. Nor if they concede two goals in each game.

With 10 days to go before the first game of the tournament, France's form suggests that there is some serious work to do if they have hopes of lifting the trophy on home soil.