PARIS (AFP) - Youssouf Hadji took another step away from the limelight of his older brother Mustapha with two late headers to keep Nancy top of the French first division on Saturday.

Moroccan international Hadji struck in the 81st and 87th minutes to give Nancy a 2-0 win over Lorient which means they will spend another week as leaders of the top flight.

Northern minnows Valenciennes moved up to second place with a surprise 1-0 win against on-form Monaco, while Le Mans make up the surprise top three with a 1-0 away win at Strasbourg.

Six-time champions Lyon drop to fourth, but could move back up to second place at one point behind Nancy when they host Lille on Sunday.

Also on Sunday title challengers Bordeaux will be looking to continue their solid start to the season, but face a potentially tricky encounter away at unpredictable Paris St Germain.

Hadji's dream is to one day play in the English Premiership, where his older brother Mustapha plied his trade with Coventry City and Aston Villa.

But Nancy will be hoping he goes nowhere fast after he pounced late in a match which could have gone either way to stun Lorient, who dropped to 10th.

Nancy coach Pablo Correa admitted that a half-time pep talk had done the trick.

"At half-time I told the guys to start playing ugly, to move up a notch. That's what they did, and it helped us grab two great goals," he said.

"Playing great football doesn't interest me if we don't get the result we want. But the start we have had to the season is great."

The future of Marseille coach Albert Emon meanwhile could be decided in the coming days after the perennial title challengers suffered their fourth defeat of the season with a 2-0 reverse at Auxerre.

The match started embarrassingly for Marseille, and just got worse.

Having arrived with only one strip, which happened to be white and the same as the home colours of Auxerre, the visitors had to borrow a different set of strips from their hosts in order to play the game.

Marseille's woes deepened when Daniel Niculae drove Benoit Pedretti's pass at the back post home for the opener in the 18th minute.

Marseille had claimed a 2-0 win over Besiktas in the Champions League in midweek but the reality of domestic football soon came back to haunt them when Niculae grabbed his second only six minutes later.

Emon's job has already been in the balance, and after this latest setback his fate could be sealed within hours.

Marseille midfielder Boudewijn Zenden is already fearful ahead of their Champions League group A clash with Liverpool in a fortnight, but he said it's not up to the club's downbeat players to decide their coach's future.

"The players didn't speak too much after the game, everyone's in their own little bubble trying to work out what went wrong in the game," said Zenden.

"It's already hard enough for us, so it's not really up to us to talk about what should happen to the coach."

He added: "We have to go on, stay optimistic. We've got Liverpool in ten days time, and that will be another difficult challenge. After that we've got Saint Etienne.

"But that's football. That's the way it is."