Delap's Double Stuns Sloppy City as Forest End Home Drought With 3-1 Win

The City Ground had waited a long time for a night like this. Five hundred and twelve minutes, to be exact — a home goalscoring drought stretching back to the final game of last season, five home games in all competitions without a single goal to cheer. It took a centre-back and a striker with a point to prove to end it, and by the time the evening was done, Nottingham Forest had beaten Manchester City 3-1. It started in the sixth minute, and it started with a mistake. Josko Gvardiol, dawdling on the ball deep in his own half, was robbed by Jair Cunha. The Brazilian defender did not hesitate. He drove into the box and slotted calmly past Gianluigi Donnarumma, the first league goal of his career, and the City Ground erupted. Owner Evangelos Marinakis was on his feet in the directors' box. Five hundred and twelve minutes of frustration, gone in one swing of a centre-back's boot. Twelve minutes later it got even better. Liam Delap picked the ball up inside his own half, and what followed was the kind of run strikers dream about. He carried it fifty yards, Marc Guehi unable to get near him, Ruben Dias unable to stop him, and lashed an unstoppable finish past Donnarumma. Two-nil, eighteen minutes in, against Manchester City. According to Opta, it was the earliest City had trailed 2-0 in a Premier League match since November 2019, when Liverpool did it to them in thirteen minutes. Delap, a Manchester City academy product who left for Ipswich and then Chelsea before arriving at Forest, was playing against his old club, and he was proving it with interest. At half-time the home side led 2-0 and, by every measure that mattered, deserved it. City had enjoyed nearly eighty percent of the ball and done almost nothing with it. Oliver Glasner's plan — sit deep, spring forward, punish every loose touch — was working to perfection. "The best half of football they have seen under the new head coach," the Times called it. City did respond. Seven minutes into the second half, Rayan Cherki dragged them back into it with a half-volley of real quality, rifling the ball past Matz Sels after Jeremy Doku had got in behind down the flank. For twenty minutes after that, the game tilted. City pressed, Forest bent, and the equaliser felt like a matter of time. Then, in the 73rd minute, Forest broke. Morgan Gibbs-White picked the ball up and drove forward, City retreating in panic, and suddenly Delap was free again. Gibbs-White slipped the pass through, and Delap smashed it into the top right corner, in off the post, for 3-1. His second of the night, his first goals at the City Ground in a Forest shirt, and the game was done. The result leaves City with three successive Premier League defeats — Aston Villa and Brighton before this — and six points behind leaders Arsenal, who had won 1-0 against Hull earlier in the day. For Forest, it is something else entirely. They began the day in 19th, a side that had won once all season, with a manager who had spent the week insisting — loudly, after that explosive post-Brentford outburst — that the performances were not far off. Now they have their evidence: a win over City, three goals at home, and a striker who looks like he belongs. The City Ground, at last, has something to sing about.