Nottingham Forest beat Manchester City 3-1 at the City Ground on Saturday, a result that would have seemed fanciful even a few hours before kick off given where both clubs have spent the autumn. It was Forest's first home win of the season, and it could hardly have mattered more to a club that had spent the build up fielding questions about the mood inside its own dressing room.
Jair Cunha gave the home side the lead inside six minutes, nicking the ball off Josko Gvardiol and running clear to finish from a tight angle. Liam Delap doubled the advantage before the quarter hour mark, scoring against the club that developed him as a teenager before letting him leave for Ipswich Town a few years ago. Rayan Cherki pulled one back early in the second half with a fine strike, and for a spell it looked as though City might rescue something from an afternoon that had started so badly. Delap had the final word though, drifting in from the left and watching his shot bounce in off the far post to make it 3-1 with seventeen minutes left.
City had chances of their own. Erling Haaland rounded goalkeeper Matz Sels only for Cunha to make a crucial block off the line, and Enzo Fernandez will know he should have done better with a free header from a Marc Guehi cross. None of it changed the outcome, and none of it will have done much to settle the nerves at a club that came into the match having won precisely none of their last three league games after winning all of their first seven.
A manager who had demanded more, and got it
Nine days earlier Forest had lost 2-0 at Brentford, their fifth defeat in six league games, and head coach Oliver Glasner used the aftermath to deliver an unusually blunt message in public. He told his players, in effect, that they needed to buy into what the club was trying to build or find somewhere else to play. Reports at the time suggested Forest's hierarchy welcomed the sentiment, even as results stayed grim and Glasner's own position came under scrutiny.
Saturday was the response, even if Glasner was careful afterwards not to call it a turning point. He reached for an old Austrian saying about one swallow not making a summer, a reminder that a single result, however welcome, does not undo weeks of struggle. He did allow himself a moment of pure relief during the match itself, sprinting the length of the technical area to join his players after Delap's second, and he singled out his captain, Ryan Yates, making his first start of the season, for praise, saying he had rarely heard a more inspiring team talk than the one Yates gave before kick off.
It mattered because Forest had arrived 19th in the table with one win from nine league games and just a single point from a possible fifteen. They had scored only six goals all season, among the fewest in the division, and had failed to win or even score in five of their previous six matches at the City Ground. A first home win, against the team sitting second, was about as emphatic a response to Glasner's ultimatum as anyone could have designed.
Old failings catch up with the division's form team
For Manchester City, this is now something close to a crisis of form, even allowing for the fact that nobody at the club will use that word out loud. They began the season by winning their first seven Premier League matches, playing with the kind of swagger that suggested the title race might be over by Christmas. Since then they have lost at Aston Villa, lost at home to Brighton, the latter ending a run of 24 consecutive league matches in which they had scored at least once, and now lost at Forest. According to the match statistics, they are the first club in English top flight history in 122 years to win their opening seven league games of a season and then lose their next three.
Enzo Maresca did not try to dress it up afterwards. He said his side's intensity in the first half was not good enough, and that the second and third goals they conceded followed an identical pattern: losing individual duels in midfield and then being caught on the counter attack. He confirmed that Guehi and Gvardiol were replaced at half time because of knocks rather than tactical reasons, which will offer City some excuse but not much comfort. Over their last seven matches in all competitions they have now conceded fourteen goals, a number that would have been unthinkable a month ago.
What it means from here
The table tells its own story. City remain six points behind leaders Arsenal, who beat Hull City 1-0 earlier on Saturday through a Martin Odegaard strike, and that gap will concern Maresca far more than any single defeat. Forest, meanwhile, climb out of the relegation zone and up to sixteenth, with momentum they have not had all season and a captain who just delivered on his manager's demand to find more.
Neither side will read too much into one result just yet, not least Glasner himself. But three points that looked almost unimaginable a fortnight ago have given Forest something to build on, and handed City a problem that now has to be solved before it becomes something more serious than an awkward few weeks in November.
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