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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.
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.
