Florian Sotoca scored two goals and assisted another as RC Lens beat hitherto high-flying FC Nantes on Saturday, but head coach Franck Haise was quick to praise the whole team.
Sotoca scored a pair of penalties, either side of setting up Facundo Medina for the second of Lens' goals in their 3-0 win at the Stade de la Beaujoire.
In so doing, who moved onto 32 goals for Lens across Ligue 1 Uber Eats and Ligue 2 BKT since Grenoble Foot 38 in 2019, making him les Sang et Or's top goalscorer since the turn of the century.
But Haise insisted it was a team effort that got Lens past a Nantes side who had won four of their previous five games coming into this one.
"Florian, Adrien [Thomasson]… we absolutely needed to spread out better to get out of their pressure, to get them to ask themselves 'how far do we want to go?" he said after the game.
"We scored four goals, but we didn't change anything, we were more efficient. That's football, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. My team didn't improve physically in the second half, but tactically."
Last season's runners-up pulled into the top half of the table with the win. They have also impressed in the UEFA Champions League this season, beating Arsenal and drawing with PSV Eindhoven, and Haise is upbeat about their form.
"It's eight matches without defeat, with four wins and four draws, including the Champions League," he said. "Maybe we could've even done better but we've begun to re-find ourselves at every level and tonight proves it."
