Sabri Lamouchi insisted Nottingham Forest are far from being the best team in the Sky Bet Championship despite flexing their promotion muscles with a thumping 4-0 win over QPR.
Tobias Figueiredo scored his first goal for the club with a first-half header before Lewis Grabban, Joao Carvalho and Alfa Semedo struck late on to lift Forest up to fourth.
Boss Lamouchi said: "We scored first and it gave us confidence. We played a great game and congratulations to the players.
"It's the first time we scored four goals, it's one more clean sheet. Keep working, keep going.
"It's just one game less. I don't want to focus on the table. Maybe if you ask me on January 1, we can discuss that, but we still have a lot of games.
"We are where we are because the players are respecting the plan, we are working well, and they deserve to be where they are.
"We are not the best team in the league, far from it, but we are working hard."
Rangers are still the only team in the entire Football League not to manage a clean sheet this season, and it was easy to see why.
After 15 minutes Forest were ahead when Portuguese defender Figueiredo outmuscled Todd Kane at the far post to guide a simple header past Joe Lumley from Joe Lolley's corner.
Rangers lost Lee Wallace to a red card early in the second half for bringing down Lolley, but they should have been level on the hour after Josh Scowen met Kane's cross eight yards out in front of goal, only to plant his header wide.
Instead the hosts collapsed in the final nine minutes as Grabban and subs Carvalho and Semedo piled on the misery.
Manager Mark Warburton, facing the club that sacked him in 2017, said: "Up to 81 minutes we were in the game.
"The red card was exceptionally harsh, it was a yellow, and it changed the dynamic – but we were in the game. I thought Josh's chance was in.
"But from 81-91 it was unacceptable. Childish goals, schoolboy goals. That's not good enough for QPR. We don't lose 4-0 at home."
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