Key events
Peeeeeep!
We’re back underway and City have made changes. Nico O’Reilly has replaced Gvardiol and Guéhi is hauled off so Matheus Nunes can enter the fray.
We have roundups too! Here’s the best of the WSL action, the Championship in brief and coverage from across Europe.
Aaron Bower
Okafor’s winner for Leeds adds insult to Tel’s injury for Spurs as Bogle escapes red
It is almost one year to the day when the Leeds manager, Daniel Farke, produced the tactical overhaul many observers believe saved his job. That day, Farke abandoned his trusted 4-3-3 when Leeds were 2-0 down at Manchester City and although they lost the game, the 3-5-2 he reverted to was the bedrock for the success that followed.
Read Aaron Bower’s full report from Elland Road:
Jacob Steinberg
Muniz rescues late point for Fulham against Newcastle after Murphy stunner
Rodrigo Muniz came off the bench to rescue a point for Fulham and deny Matthias Jaissle a welcome victory after a difficult week. Newcastle produced an improved display after a run of four defeats in five games in all competitions but they could not hold out after going 1-0 up thanks to a vicious late strike from Jacob Murphy.
Jacob Steinberg’s full report from Craven Cottage:
Ed Aarons
Ødegaard extends Arsenal lead at top with winner to break Hull resistance
As most Arsenal supporters would testify, patience is a virtue. They needed plenty during the 22-year wait to be crowned Premier League champions and Mikel Arteta’s side certainly had to retain their composure as they tried to break down a dogged Hull team. They had not beaten Arsenal in 14 attempts since winning on their first visit to this ground in 2008. But with 20 minutes still to play, there was every chance that Sergej Jakirovic’s team could have pulled off one of the shocks of the season.
Read Ed Aaron’s full report from the Emirates:
If you’re after some half-time reading, there’s plenty to get stuck into from our Saturday football coverage…
Half-time: Nottingham Forest 2-0 Manchester City
That’s the first half up, great 45 minutes of football, especially if you’re of the Forest persuasion.
45+2 min The last chance of the half goes to Forest after Anderson gives away a free-kick on the right, but Gibbs-White goes too long and Donnarumma punches away.
45+1 min City get a corner in the first of two added minutes but it’s too deep and Haaland can’t hook it in on the stretch.
43 min This is all City as we near the end of the half. A goal before the break would change the mood significantly.
41 min Couple of decent chances for City. The first a a piercing move as Anderson slides in Fernández who lays it into the path of speeding Haaland, the Norwegian rounds Sels but can’t beat the defender on the line from a tight angle. From the corner, Anderson plucks it out of the sky to flick it over his should and shoot on the volley, that would have been some goal, but it was straight at Sels.
39 min Ndiaye is caught by a stray arm from Murillo, despite the rolling around there’s nothing in that. Up goes the “You cheating bastards” chant.
38 min Anderson catches McAtee late and the whistles go up. There’s been some light jeering when Anderson gets the ball but well, well short vitriol. Two decent years of service and big transfer fee means there’s little to complain about for the home fans on Anderson’s return.
34 min Cherki has been anonymous so far. He’s a lovely player but if he is to succeed Bernardo Silva as City’s chief creator then this is the type of game where needs to step up.
31 min Haaland has City first effort on target, easy enough for Sels. Maresca will be concerned that has taken more than half an hour.
27 min This is more like the Delap we saw at Ipswich. He’s been a nuisance for the City backline and has a deceptive turn of pace. Here he wins a free-kick from Guéhi by getting in front of the defender and drawing the contact. Forest launch it into the box and it’s nervously flicked away by a City defender.
24 min Big chance for Fernández as he gets on the end of an well-angled Guéhi cross from the City left, but the midfielder can’t keep his header down. He should have scored.
23 min Another Forest corner, this one from the left, is only half cleared by City and Murillo has a shot from the edge of the box. It’s tame and Donnarumma gathers easily.
20 min 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 min 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 min 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 min 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 min 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 min Daniel Muñoz takes the first opportunity to heave a long throw into the box, Forest win the flick on but Donnarumma claims easily.
2 min 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
