Wait long enough, and results will come to reflect performances. Manchester City may have won their first seven games of the season but they always looked vulnerable, and now have lost three in a row. Nottingham Forest may have been second bottom but, other than the twin curses of missing chances and giving away daft goals, they seemed to be playing reasonably well. Put the two together, and the outcome was a dramatic regression to the mean. It turns out the stats were right, after all.
Liam Delap scored twice to remind people what a good striker he can be. Oliver Glasner, after last week’s anger, can breathe a little easier in his job. And Enzo Maresca remains a paradox, a manager obsessive about control whose teams always seem oddly susceptible to direct running.
After last week’s defeat at Brentford, Glasner said he regretted compromising too much in the early weeks of his reign at Forest. Although he gave no precise details as to what that might mean, he elaborated a little on Thursday, speaking of the need for “trust and respect” in the right balance and suggesting there had been too much trust and not enough respect this season at Forest: too much Woodstock and not enough “high-performance nature of military”.
Glasner’s brave new uncompromising world was ushered in with just two changes to the starting lineup from the defeat at Brentford last week, Ola Aina and Dan Ndoye dropping out for Daniel Muñoz and Ryan Yates, who both came on at half-time last week. It may have been an underwhelming revolution but it soon worked, Jair Cunha dispossessing Josko Gvardiol and running through to open the scoring after six minutes, Forest’s first home goal since Morgan Gibbs-White’s strike against Bournemouth 34 minutes into the final game of last season, a drought of 510 minutes.
No side this season had underperformed their xG by such a margin as Forest; they began the weekend third in Opta’s expected table but second bottom of the actual table. To an extent that is a matter of misfortune: defeat at Brentford last week, for instance, was a result of a cross and a shot that both looped in off Nikola Milenkovic; when you concede one shot on target but two goals, you know you’ve been unlucky. And when, on Saturday, three minutes after Forest had taken the lead, a Jérémy Doku shot hit Milenkovic and, rather than looping agonisingly past Matz Sels, cannoned wide for a corner, Forest must really have known their luck was in.
One of the biggest issues for Forest this season has been the form of Delap. A gruelling spell at Chelsea had seemingly sapped his confidence but, 18 minutes in, he surged from inside his own half, ran, as Jair had for the opener, between Rúben Dias and Marc Guéhi, and thumped his shot over the dive of Gianluigi Donnarumma. With confidence, it turns out, Delap is a very different player.
Guéhi’s form, meanwhile, is becoming a major concern for City. With Dias wary of Xaver Schlager running to his right and potentially becoming a passing option, it was surely Guéhi’s responsibility to close Delap down. As it was, the pair left a huge channel, inviting Delap to keep going to score his second goal since joining Forest. Guéhi and Gvardiol were both withdrawn at half-time.
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If James McAtee had not missed the target with two very presentable opportunities, Forest could have been out of sight by half-time. It was never, though, going to be that easy. Seven minutes into the second half, a long diagonal set Doku in behind Muñoz, and although his cross was half-cleared, Rayan Cherki slammed in a brilliant half volley. In a moment, the mood changed. All the anxiety stored up by two months of disappointing form bubbled to the surface again.
Forest may feel that, after the season they have had, they are owed some luck. They were nearly paid back a slice of that when a Yates shot deflected off Elliot Anderson and dropped on to the back of the bar. But still they had burned through a fair amount, with blocks, brave headers and clearances off the line when Gibbs-White set Delap away on the counter. A week ago, it would barely have registered as an opportunity but, self-belief restored, Delap swept into the box and drove his finish in off the far post.
Forest are out of the relegation zone and the idea that City might challenge Arsenal for the title, even if there is no points deduction, is beginning to look a little fanciful.
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