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Key events
20 mins: McAtee should make it 3-0! Another turnover and drive upfield this time the low ball in from left finds the former City man on the edge of the box but his shot high and not very handsome.
Goal! Nottingham Forest 2-0 Manchester City (Delap 18)
Wow! That is some goal from Liam Delap. Again Forest turn it over in midfield and the strikes picks it up just inside his own half before driving at the heart of the City defence before rifling it past Donnarumma. No frills, but that was a great finish from a striker lacking in confidence.
15 mins: Forest turn the ball over in midfield and go early into the right channel to find Delap, who links nicely with Muñoz to win a corner. Donnarumma is not convincing under it, but McAtee’s ball curls over him and out of play.
14 mins: There’s a lovely edge to this game thanks to that early goal. Forest have their tails up and biting into tackles, while City are moving the ball around nicely on the slick pitch.
11 mins: For all Doku offers going forward, he can be exploited going the other way and in Muñoz Forest have the perfect player to take advantage. Gvardiol will need to be far better than he was for the first goal as he will be given a hefty defensive responsibility.
8 mins: Lovely sweeping break from City and Doku really should do better. Cherki slides in Ndiaye who pulls it back to the Belgian, who jinks past one but has his shot blocked by a retreating defender. The corner comes to nothing. Forest were really opened up there.
Goal! Nottingham Forest 1-0 Manchester City (Cunha 6)
Gvardiol dithers on the ball and has his pocket picked by Jair Cunha who sees it open up in front of him and keeps going. The defender shows excellent composure to slot home and end more than seven hours of goalless football for Forest at the City Ground.
3 mins: Daniel Muñoz takes the first opportunity to heave a long throw into the box, Forest win the flick on but Donnarumma claims easily.
2 mins: A couple of minutes in and Forest have already launched a trio of long bombs forward. That probably signals how they’re going to approach this one.
Peeeeeep!
We’re off at the City Ground.
Before kick-off, we’ll hear The Last Post. Remembrance Sunday is tomorrow.
Here we go. The teams are emerging from the tunnel.
How do you lot see this one? Drop me an email via the link at the top of the page.
Are you ready for some data? The Opta supercomputer has backed City to find their form and return to winning ways after they took all three points in 51.5% of the 10,000 pre-match simulations. Forest are handed a 25.4% chance of causing an upset, while the points were shared in the remaining 23.1% of simulations.
Some more Opta stats: in English top-flight history, only Sheffield Wednesday in have ever won their first seven matches and then lost their next three. That happened in 1904-05.
For a variety of reasons, City don’t lose consecutive matches very often. They had lost only twice in previous 33 Premier League matches prior to the defeats against Aston Villa and Brighton. Only once in the last 10 years have City been beaten in more consecutive league matches, when they lost four between November and December 2024 as their title defence fell apart.
For Forest, the underlying numbers suggest they are performing better than their current league position of 19th suggests. Forest have attempted the second-most shots in the league this season (152), but scored just six goals – the fewest of any team – and have the lowest shot-conversion rate (4%).
Enzo Maresca’s pre-match press briefing centred on goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma’s form, with the Manchester City manager insisting the Italian will get back to his best with little guidance in his native language.
Maresca has continued to back his first choice throughout his troubles and has no plans for in-depth conversations with his fellow Italian. “It’s much easier for me with the language,” said Maresca. “We are [having conversations] but there are players who when they make mistakes, you need conversations with them and there are players that when they make a mistake you just need eye contact to understand that he recognises and he knows.
“With Gigio it’s quite easy because every time he has made some mistake or something that was not correct, he recognises immediately.
“I spoke with Gigio but sometimes you don’t need to be so deep with some players because they know they have made a mistake and recognise that. Just try to avoid that and move on. Overall he’s good. He’s quite relaxed in terms of he recognises that he has done some mistakes but at the same time he has also made some good saves.
“It’s just a matter of balance – try to avoid mistakes and continue to do the right things.”
The fixture also marks Elliot Anderson’s first return to the City Ground since his £116m summer move from Forest.
Anderson has been in good form and Maresca has been impressed with how the midfielder has settled at the club.
Maresca said: “It’s a big game for Elliot but it’s a big game for all of us. He wants to understand, he wants to learn and improve and for a manager it’s a dream because you know that he wants to learn.”
Michael Butler
From this week’s 10 things to look out for this weekend: Will Glasner’s risky words inspire Forest?
Oliver Glasner has previous. He led Wolfsburg from mid-table to the Champions League but fell out with the club hierarchy and left in 2021. Glasner next guided Eintracht Frankfurt to Europa League glory but was openly critical of the squad’s imbalance and quality in four separate outbursts and departed in 2023. His time at Crystal Palace was a great success but after accusing the Eagles’ board in January of “abandoning” his team with the sale of Marc Guéhi to Manchester City, the Austrian left this summer for Nottingham Forest, where he became the fifth head coach in less than a year. You can probably guess where this is going. After Saturday’s defeat by Brentford left Forest 19th, Glasner was typically abrasive: “If the players buy in [to my methods], I think we can have a turnaround. And if not, the sixth manager will come in.” We’ll soon find out if Glasner has won the players around with City visiting Nottingham this weekend. If Forest’s woeful form continues, Glasner may either walk or get his marching orders from trigger-happy owner Evangelos Marinakis.
Andrew Beasley
Nottingham Forest’s historic goal drought at home is part of longstanding problem
Nottingham Forest and Schalke are yet to score at home in 2026-27. The former are one of only five teams in the history of the English top flight to have failed to score in their first four home league matches. Three of the preceding four also drew a blank in game five, which will be deflating news for Oliver Glasner with Manchester City heading to the City Ground on Saturday looking for a win after consecutive league defeats. Forest’s expected goals total implies they should have scored but a flaw in their data shows a reason why.
They also failed to find the net in a Carabao Cup home game with Leeds, meaning they have amassed 70 shots in all competitions without giving the home fans a goal to celebrate. As extreme as this situation has become, Forest scored only two goals more than the lowest home scorers in the Premier League last season (Burnley), drawing a blank on nine occasions. This is a longstanding issue.
Read Andrew Beasley’s full analysis of Forest’s woes in front of goal:
Team news!
Nottingham Forest XI: Sels, Munoz, Jair, Milenkovic, Murillo, Williams, Yates, Schlager, Gibbs-White, McAtee, Delap.
Subs: Victor, Diomande, Netz, Sangare, Hudson Odoi, Ndoye, Wood, Jesus, Kalimuendo.
Manchester City XI: Donnarumma, Khusanov, Dias (C), Guéhi, Gvardiol, Anderson, Fernández, Ndiaye, Cherki, Doku, Haaland.
Subs: Rulli, Kovacić, Reis, Nunes, Bouaddi, O’Reilly, Allan, Foden, Lewis.
Preamble
With two defeats in a row for Manchester City in the Premier League, buffered slightly by a midweek Champions League win in Leipzig, a trip to the City Ground where Nottingham Forest are yet to score this season seems quite welcoming.
Oliver Glasner is getting increasingly spikey. He said ahead of this game that the club are not running a “spa and wellness hotel”. Losing when they should have won against Glasner’s former club Crystal Palace did not help the mood and to some it is a surprise the German is still in a job when you consider the lack of patience shown to some of his predecessors.
Defensively, Forest are relatively secure. They’ve only conceded two goals less than fifth-place Everton, but their plight comes more from the failures of their forward line. Liam Delap, the £45m summer investment, has not generated decent returns and Morgan Gibbs-White’s tenacious invention is going to waste. Chris Wood is seen only in cameos. Very little seems to be working.
Zooming out, this is now City’s fourth league game since the guilty verdict came down and the spectacle doesn’t get any less strange. It’s football happening before your eyes, often to quite a high standard, but is it real? Does it count? The holding pattern will continue until we get a resolution on the punishment. This stasis also serves to make much analysis of City’s merits as a football team moot. The troubling form of Gianluigi Donnarumma and Marc Guéhi, the inconsistency of Rayan Cherki, the relentlessness of Erling Haaland, it’s all devoid of meaning.
Perhaps it’s best to watch each game on its individual merits and not try to extrapolate broad conclusions. In that case, this represents a chance for Forest to break their home duck against a wounded City side. Glasner is good at setting up teams to frustrate and break, tactics that will be helpful in this one. Should be a good watch, but let me know your thoughts via the link at the top of the page.
Kick-off: 5.30pm GMT
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