Having beaten Dijon with a weakened team on Sunday, Lens’ attention turned to catching up on their matches postponed due to Covid-19, with Nantes first up.
Franck Haise made six changes to the team that beat Dijon. To wrestle with the mid-week fixture, he had rested several players on the weekend and scraped past the bottom club thanks to a goalkeeping error. Gaël Kakuta, Cheick Doucouré, Ignatius Ganago, Simon Banza and Clément Michelin all returned to the line-up, while left-back Massadio Haïdara started in the back three. With Kakuta returning, Haise reverted back to the 3-4-1-2 formation used this season, after having used the 3-4-3 often used by Philippe Montanier last year in their previous outing.
Christian Gourcuff also made four changes to the team that drew with Metz, moving Ludovic Blas out wide as they switched from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-4-2.
Nantes would generally begin to engage Lens mid-way into the home side’s half. The two forwards would move up from blocking the midfielders to press the centre-backs with one of the wingers often moving up to help them.
As Lens’ back three would spread very wide across the pitch, leaving far too much ground for Renaud Emond and Randal Kolo Muani to cover, they found themselves with time on the ball. More often than not, this was wasted though: Lens’ centre-backs had time on the ball but no one to pass to, as one of Yannick Cahuzac or Doucouré would push forward into attack. This made it easy for Nantes to just push up one midfielder to stick tight to whoever stayed deep, cutting out the open short passes and forcing Lens long.
Despite playing target men Banza and Ganago in attack, Nantes were generally finding it easy to repel these long balls. Lens did have some success getting Michelin sprinting in behind Dennis Appiah down the right though, stretching the Nantes defence for crossing opportunities.
Lens were again relying on crosses into the box to create chances however they took the lead by drawing the opposition wide as they had against Saint-Etienne, opening up space inside. Issiaga Sylla picked up the ball out wide, drawing Sébastien Corchia out, then Banza made a run in behind the full-back, drawing Andrei Girotto wide too. Banza cut back a low ball into the box, where, thanks to Banza, Kakuta had space to finish.
Nantes were completely ineffective from an attacking perspective in the first half. Perhaps trying to mimic Lille’s success against Lens, they had Imran Louza and Blas tuck in off the flanks. Rather than outnumbering Lens, this simply left the midfield congested, and Nantes were finding it difficult to squeeze passes through.
To fix Nantes, Gourcuff made a triple substitution at half-time. Off went Appiah, Emond and Mehdi Abeid; on came Fabio, Pedro Chirivella and Abdoul Kader Bamba. Blas was moved back inside as Nantes switched to a 4-2-3-1, while Louza swapped flanks as Bamba took his place on the left.
This new set-up saw Nantes begin to double up and even triple up on Lens out wide. Previously Nantes’ wide players had tucked inside, leaving the Lens wing-backs comfortable pushing up to close down the full-backs. Now whenever Lens’ wing-backs stepped up to close down Fabio and Corchia, they had Bamba and Louza making runs in behind them, while Blas would drift out to the flanks too. It also helped that Corchia and Fabio were much more aggressive in possession, willing to push forward on the ball whenever they received it.
Abdoulaye Touré and Blas also seemed to simply wake up. Chirivella added passing quality to the midfield, but the starting pair were the more notable men despite having been anonymous in the first half. They were rushing about to get on the ball and moving it on quickly, with Blas frequently coming deep to progress the ball too.
Lens picked up the pace of their own game to match Nantes, but Haise did nothing to actually change their set-up, making only like-for-like substitutions.
Eventually Nantes equalised. Sylla was drawn forward to close down Corchia and Kolo ran in behind Haïdara onto a long ball, then touched it around Loïc Badé. Always aggressive, Jonathan Gradit went steaming into a covering tackle and clattered Kolo, giving away a penalty that Touré converted.
A draw was a fair result. Lens had the better of the first half, while Nantes had the better of the second.
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