Nottingham Forest 1, Manchester City 0
Manchester City fell to a ninth defeat of the season after Callum Hudson-Odoi’s late winner for Nottingham Forest.
Embed from Getty ImagesIn a clash of the Premier League’s third and fourth place teams the game never really reached the heights.
Despite remaining in fourth place for now after the defeat City boss Pep Guardiola declared that City have ten finals to qualify for next season’s Champions League.
“We struggled to create chances but I give credit to the opponent because they defended really well.
“Our game was a little bit slow. Everything was not as quick as we should do. When we arrived in the final third we were not brilliant enough.
“I will never blame Ederson. It was a good action from Hudson-Odoi.
“We don’t win enough games. We have ten games left and need to win a lot of games to qualify [for the Champions League].
“We have to play better starting with Brighton next week and after the international break we’ll see what happens.”
Jack Grealish and Omar Marmoush were only named on the bench as Abdudokir Khusanov returned to the starting lineup after being the week off.
But after a decent period in the first half at the City were remarkably shot shy – not even testing Matz Sels until Jeremy Doku’s tame effort at the end of the first half.
City’s hosts were disciplined in defence while the visitors once again failed to create chances for Erling Haaland.
Ederson had already saved from Hudson-Odoi – pushing a shot against the post – but could have done better with the 83rd minute winner.
England boss Thomas Tuchel may be convinced to hand call-ups to some of the Nottingham Forest players who have taken the home side to third with some excellent play.
Morgan Gibbs-White’s big switch from the left caught City napping and Hudson-Odoi capitalised by cutting inside from the right before beating City’s keeper at his near post.