Nottingham Forest 1 Man City 2
City continue to put wins together. This game easily could of been a banana skin for City and nearly was when Hutchinson equalised for Forest in the 54th minute when the game was going end-to-end, City struggled to retain proper control over the game after the equaliser and the decision making from the attack led to chances going to waste when they should have been getting shots on goal. It looked like City may be about to drop points up until Rayan Cherki popped up from the edge of the box after Gvardiol headed it down to put City back into the lead and win them the game, I’ll talk more about Cherki later but it really is astonishing at just how cheap City got him for when you look at others who went for far more.
Alright lets talk about Rayan Cherki. There was a lot of talk over the summer with there being a catch to Rayan Cherki, the narrative floating about was that he was ‘lazy’ or that he was a ‘luxury player’, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I watched every Lyon game last season with the first chance I got to watch him being against Man United in the Europa League Quarter Finals last season. Over the two legs he stood head and shoulders above any other player on the pitch in my opinion scoring two goals over the two legs eventually being knocked out in extra-time in what was probably the most ridiculous match I’ve ever seen but I saw enough to know that Cherki was a top top player. It took him a while to start properly getting minutes in this City team but he’s just an absolute joy to watch play football, it seems like he picks the right pass every time and we saw that again with the pass to Reijnders for the opening goal in this game when City really needed it, what a player Rayan Cherki is.
Nottingham Forest aren’t getting relegated. I know they lost this game but there is far to much quality in this Forest side to get relegated this season, we all know the quality of Elliot Anderson and Morgan Gibbs-White but the player that caught my eye for Forest today was Igor Jesus, in what you could only call the grave-yard shift up front Jesus did an excellent job holding up the ball and winning his teams free-kicks to get them up the pitch as well as setting up Forests’ equaliser with a cross to the back-post to Omari Hutchinson. Igor Jesus is exactly what Sean Dyche looks for in his strikers and I’d be surprised if Chris Wood came straight back in the starting 11 when he returns from injury.
Should Ruben Dias have been sent off? Right at the start of the second half Ruben Dias cut across Igor Jesus bringing him down on the edge of the box and already being on a yellow card I’m sure he was holding his breath when the ref gave the foul but the ref decided against showing Dias a second yellow card. In my opinion the ref bottled this decision and should have sent Dias off which would have changed the game entirely as City scored only a couple minutes after this incident. I wonder if the referee would have booked Dias if he wasn’t already on a yellow but I suppose we’ll never know, City got away with this one.
City move back it 1st place. It may only be for a couple of hours but City continue to put the pressure on Arsenal to keep winning and you wonder if eventually Arsenal are going to slip up at some point with the constant pressure that Guardiola’s side keep putting on them. City have been here before and you wonder if history is going to repeat itself again when it comes to Man City vs Arsenal in the title race. I suppose it could turn into a 3-way battle for the title if Villa beat Arsenal midweek at the Emirates which would blow the title race wide open completely for Villa and City. Could it be an early title decider on Tuesday? I suppose we’ll wait and see.