Paris Saint-Germain manager Laurent Blanc says his job is not to make players like Edinson Cavani feel comfortable, but to help the French champions win matches.
PSG host Toulouse in the last 32 of the Coupe de France on Tuesday evening and ahead of the game Blanc has been forced to address reports that Cavani is unhappy.
The Uruguayan striker has scored 10 goals in 17 league games this season but he has regularly made it clear that he is not happy playing a wide role in a 4-3-3 formation.
Amid persistent rumours of Premier League interest, L'Equipe suggested on Monday that PSG are starting to lose patience with a player they signed for €64 million in 2013.
Blanc admitted last week that he had discussed Cavani's early departure for his Christmas holidays with senior players, and has left him out of the starting lineup since the turn of the year.
But when the former Napoli front man replaced the injured Javier Pastore early on in Saturday's 1-0 league win at Toulouse, Blanc changed to 4-4-2 with Cavani joining Zlatan Ibrahimovic in attack.
PSG switched back to Blanc's favoured formation soon after, however, and the ex-France boss dismissed the idea that he had tried two up front purely to accommodate Cavani.
"I'm not here to make him feel comfortable," Blanc told a news conference on Monday. "I'm here to win matches.
"I put him in a central position with Ibra and I said that Lucas could play behind them. At half-time I saw that it wasn't working and I went back to a three-man attack. Sometimes it's simple -- you don't have to look too far."
But Blanc also rejected the suggestion that there was any particular issue with Cavani, pointing out that he was one of four outfield players who had played the most minutes this season.
"To listen to you, there are always problems with Cavani since he's been at PSG," Blanc told reporters. "I'm in a good position to know.
"If there's someone who's defended him well, it's me... take a look over the whole season. Cavani has played 80 percent of the games."
Blanc also took time to praise back-up goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu's attitude. Sirigu lost his starting place following the arrival of Kevin Trapp over the summer. He keen to play as many games as possible in the second half of the season to ensure he gets a place in Italy's Euro 2016 squad.
According to RMC, Torino have opened up negotiations with PSG in a bid to take the former Palermo goalkeeper on loan for the rest of the season.
Sirigu's agent, Giovanni Branchini, hit out at PSG on Monday, expressing his belief that his client had not been given a fair shot at challenging for the No. 1 jersey despite some high-profile errors by Trapp.
"PSG are a strange club, run in quite a special way," Branchini told Anch'io lo Sport. "I'm going through a very odd situation with Salvatore Sirigu. He's not playing for bizarre reasons -- it's more by choice of the directors rather than the manager.
"It's not linked to his conduct. The players have difficulty fitting into that environment."