Forest fight but City take spoils

NOTTINGHAM

- By SARAH CLAPSON

Forest suffered a second successive Premier League defeat as they were toppled 2-1 by Manchester City despite a good performance at the City Ground.Looking to bounce back from their poor performance in a 1-0 away defeat against Fulham before Christmas, Sean Dyche's men were full of fight and energy Trentside. They showed a willingness to push forward and constantly looked for ways to work an opening in a positive start.

Clear-cut chances were in short supply but the Reds demonstrated their intent from the off. Morgan Gibbs-White was desperately close to getting on the end of a Callum Hudson-Odoi cross early on.

At the other end of the pitch, the visitors were mostly kept at arm's length in the first half.

Nikola Milenkovic made an important block to keep out Erling Haaland with 20 minutes gone but John Victor did not have a single effort on target to deal with before the break. Forest launched themselves in front of everything City threw at them.

Switch off for a second, though, and Pep Guardiola's side are capable of dishing out some punishment. They did just that three minutes after the restart when Tiijani Reijnders latched on to Rayan Cherki's through-ball and slotted it past John to give his team the lead.