Liam Delap scored twice against his first club as Nottingham Forest beat Manchester City 3-1 at the City Ground on Saturday. It was Forest’s first home Premier League win of the season, and City have now lost three league games in a row.
Jair Cunha put Oliver Glasner’s side ahead after six minutes and Delap doubled the lead on 18 minutes. Rayan Cherki pulled one back early in the second half, but Delap settled it with a counter-attack goal 17 minutes from time. The result lifts Forest out of the relegation zone. Enzo Maresca’s City stay second, six points behind leaders Arsenal.
Delap punishes his old club
Forest’s first goal came from a mistake. Cunha robbed Josko Gvardiol midway inside the City half and slotted past Gianluigi Donnarumma. Before that, Forest had gone 511 minutes without a home league goal this season.
The second goal showed exactly why Forest signed Delap. Xaver Schlager beat Elliot Anderson to a loose ball in midfield and played Delap through from inside his own half. The striker ran between two defenders, got away from Marc Guehi and finished. It was only his second goal for the club since his £50m club-record move from Chelsea in the summer, and his first at home.
City improved after half-time, when Maresca took off both Guehi and Gvardiol. Accounts differ on why: Sky Sports reported Maresca as saying both players had knocks, while other reports described the change as tactical. Seven minutes after the restart, Jeremy Doku’s long ball was deflected into Cherki’s path and he struck it into the top corner.
Forest survived a spell of pressure. Ryan Yates hit the crossbar with a deflected effort on 67 minutes, and six minutes later Morgan Gibbs-White sent Delap clear on the break. Delap finished off the far post with his left foot.
According to Opta, Delap is only the second player to score twice in a Premier League match against City after previously playing for them in the competition. The first was Nicolas Anelka, for Bolton Wanderers in December 2006. Delap came through City’s academy but made only two Premier League appearances for them.
Relief for Glasner as Forest climb
Forest had won only once in their opening nine league games and had not scored at home in four attempts. Saturday’s win was their second of the season and lifted them to 16th. Manchester United dropped into the bottom three as a result.
“I think everybody felt huge happiness but also relief,” Glasner said. “It can be a turning point but we have to prove it.”
The approach that worked so well for Glasner at Crystal Palace was clear here: fast transitions, quick attacks behind the defence and hard running off the ball. Sky Sports reported that Forest covered roughly six kilometres more than City. Opta said Forest had not been two goals up so early in a home Premier League match since May 1999, against Sheffield Wednesday.
The key facts from the City Ground:
- Forest’s first home Premier League win, and first home league goal, of 2026-27
- Delap now has three goals for Forest, two of them against City
- City conceded three to a side that started the day in the relegation zone for the first time since losing 3-2 at Norwich in September 2019
- City were 2-0 down earlier than in any Premier League game since November 2019 at Liverpool
City’s slump deepens
City won their first seven league games of the season. This defeat followed losses to Aston Villa and Brighton, and Opta says City are only the second team in English top-flight history to win their first seven games and then lose the next three. Sheffield Wednesday did it in 1904-05.
“It’s quite clear, first half we were not good enough to match the intensity that this kind of games require,” Maresca said. “We concede two and then we try to react, but most of the time in football when you are 2-0 down it’s too late.”
He also put the run in context. “We won the first seven in a row and that’s never happened, and now we’ve lost three in a row – it’s football,” he told Sky Sports. “We have to try to be better game after game.”
City had chances. Erling Haaland rounded Matz Sels only for Cunha to clear his shot, then curled another attempt just wide. Enzo Fernandez should have scored from Guehi’s cross. But City were sloppy in possession in the first half, and Forest scored both early goals from turnovers.
City go into the international break second and still in the title race. Their problems off the pitch continue: the club are appealing against the verdict on the Premier League’s financial charges. For Forest, the break comes after their best result of the season. As Glasner said, they now have to show it can be a turning point.
—
I checked the story before writing it, and it’s real. Nottingham Forest beat Manchester City 3-1 at the City Ground on Saturday 7 November 2026, and four outlets confirm the scorers and goal times. The article comes to roughly 720 words.
A few things you should know:
– **Goal minute:** ESPN puts Delap’s second goal at 74 minutes; Sky Sports, Opta Analyst and AFP fit 73. I avoided giving a minute and wrote “17 minutes from time”.
– **Half-time substitutions:** reports disagree on why Guehi and Gvardiol came off. Sky says Maresca blamed knocks; AFP and Opta call it a tactical change. The article says the reports differ.
– **Left out:** I couldn’t find a source for league points totals, possession or expected-goals figures, the next fixtures, or the scores of City’s defeats to Villa and Brighton. None of these appear in the article.
– **Not in the reports:** the line about Glasner’s Crystal Palace style is my own analysis.
– **Memory:** I saved the checked facts to memory (`forest-city-delap-verified.md`).
Sources:
– [Sky Sports](https://www.skysports.com/football/nottingham-forest-vs-manchester-city/6062946629846139232)
– [ESPN](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/50410354/manchester-city-nottingham-forest-premier-league-loss)
– [Opta Analyst](https://theanalyst.com/articles/nottingham-forest-vs-man-city-stats-premier-league-11-2026)
– [Yahoo Sports/AFP](https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/delap-double-condemns-man-city-193920379.html)
– [Businessday NG](https://businessday.ng/sports/article/delap-brace-inspires-nottingham-forest-to-3-1-win-over-man-city)
– [TNT Sports](https://www.tntsports.co.uk/football/premier-league/2026-2027/live-nottingham-forest-manchester-city_mtc21883217/live-commentary.shtml)
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
1142 articles published
