Lorient made the two-hour drive south-east down the Bay of Biscay one point and two places better off than their hosts, and raced into a sixth-minute lead with Eli Junior Kroupi living up to his name in becoming the youngest scorer in their history just three months past his 17th birthday.

But Nantes dominated the scoring from there, with Matthis Abline, Eray Cömert, and Mostafa Mohamed on target before Romain Faivre replied. Florent Mollet and Moses Simon then scored either side of a Tosin Aiyegun striker and les Canaris took the spoils in an eight-goal thriller.

"I regret the goal we conceded at 3-2 which was completely avoidable," Aristouy conceded after the game. "We have work to do but we scored five goals with five different scorers. I don't want to say we played total football but I loved what we did, even more so against this Lorient team, who we had to play hard against.

Of Nantes' five scorers, Abline, Cömert and Mollet arrived this summer, from Stade Rennais FC, Valencia and Schalke respectively, while Mohamed's loan from Galatasaray was made permanent. Aristouy is pleased his side are beginning to gel.

"I had the feeling towards the end of the transfer window, with a completed and quality squad, that we could finally become a Ligue 1 team that counts again," he said. "We won't get ahead of ourselves, though. When we lost two games we weren't the worst team in the league, and now we're won two we're not the best."

>> MATCH REPORT: Nantes take thrilling 8-goal derby win