Nottingham Forest vs Manchester City

City Ground is the venue as bottom-half Nottingham Forest and table-topping Manchester City go head-to-head in a lopsided Premier League fixture.

With their starting center-back pairing picking up injuries early into last weekend’s trip to Fulham, Nottingham Forest became the first side in Premier League history to sub off two players within the opening ten minutes of play in a 2-0 defeat at Craven Cottage. Back to the City Ground, where they haven’t lost any of their last seven league outings (W4, D3) since a 3-2 loss to Fulham in mid-September, Steve Cooper’s men will have to avenge a humiliating 6-0 loss in the reverse fixture in August. Yet, that defeat forms part of Forest’s woeful run of seven consecutive top-flight losses against reigning champions by an aggregate score of 29-3.

In the meantime, Manchester City followed up a 3-1 home romping of Aston Villa with a crucial midweek triumph at Arsenal in midweek by an identical scoreline, leapfrogging the ‘Gunners’ at the summit. That win halted City’s underwhelming run of back-to-back league defeats on the road, though Pep Guardiola’s men have kept just one clean sheet on their last five league travels. On a more positive note, the ‘Citizens’ have won nine straight top-flight meetings with newly-promoted sides, including five on the road since losing at Norwich City in September 2019. The continuation of that run would see Man City complete their first league double over Forest since 1990/91.