Liam Delap scored twice against his former club as Nottingham Forest beat Manchester City 3-1 at the City Ground on Saturday, November 7, 2026. The win is Forest’s first at home in the Premier League this season, and it completes a collapse nobody in English football has seen in more than a century.
FINAL: Nottingham Forest 3, Manchester City 1
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Delap Punishes The Club That Raised Him
Forest had not scored a single goal at home this season before kickoff, and the drought took six minutes to end. Jair Cunha tracked Josko Gvardiol, dispossessed him and ran through to score with his left foot, giving the City Ground its first home goal after almost six months and eight and a half hours of football without one, as Sky Sports’ match report records. Twelve minutes later it was 2-0. Xaver Schlager beat former Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson to the ball in midfield and sent Delap through, and the striker powered clear before lashing in just his second goal for the club.
The numbers behind the start show how uncomfortable City were. NBC Sports’ live coverage noted that after 40 minutes City held 74 percent of the ball but had managed only three shot attempts and six touches in the Forest box, while Forest had taken seven shots, put four on target and led the expected goals count. City’s best moment of the half came when Erling Haaland rounded Matz Sels, only for Cunha to clear his goal-bound shot off the line, a block worth as much as the goal the defender had already scored.
Enzo Maresca responded at half-time by removing both Gvardiol and Marc Guehi from his back line, and the change briefly worked. Rayan Cherki halved the deficit early in the second half with a volleyed rocket, City pushed hard for an equaliser, and Ryan Yates saw a shot loop off Anderson and hit the crossbar at the other end. Then, on 73 minutes, Morgan Gibbs-White fed Delap on the break and the striker’s angled shot found the top corner. Oliver Glasner sprinted down the touchline to celebrate with him, and the game was done.
Nottingham Forest 3-1 Manchester City: A First In 122 Years
The historic weight of the result sits on City’s side of the scoreline. As Sky Sports reported at full-time, City are the first top-flight team in 122 years to win their first seven league matches and then lose the next three. City Xtra’s match report names the last side to do it: Sheffield Wednesday, in the 1904-05 season. City opened this campaign with seven straight wins under Maresca, and the unravelling has been just as fast, with defeats to Aston Villa and Brighton, the Brighton loss covered by iimiTV on November 1, now followed by this one.
Delap’s part in it carries its own edge. He came through City’s academy, left for regular football, and arrived at Forest in a club-record move from Chelsea after scoring only once in his opening eight games for his new club. Against the club that raised him, he scored with his right foot on a solo run in the first half and with his left on the counter in the second, a complete centre-forward performance. After the game he was matter of fact about it, telling reporters: “It’s been coming. We’d been performing like that every week but just not putting them in the net. Today we did.” He added: “We did everything right, got the three points and are happy going into the international break with a win.”
Forest End The City Ground Drought
For Forest, the context is a season of near misses finally turning. They began the day 19th, with one win from their opening nine league games, and no goals at all from their first four home matches. The underlying play had been better than the results: NBC’s pre-match numbers had Forest carrying 14.34 expected goals for the season and only six actual goals to show for it, one of the biggest underperformances in the division. Glasner had flagged exactly that before the game, saying: “It’s not changing massive things. It’s the details on a daily basis. We can get this turned around if we’re more efficient and clinical taking our chances. That’s what it’s all about.”
On Saturday the chances finally went in, three of them, and Glasner credited the collective afterwards. “It was a very good day to play Manchester City but the energy in the team and at the City Ground was so incredible that it would have been tough for any team in the world to play us,” he said. “I could see a team fighting for each other today. Every single player left his heart on the pitch today.” It was also Forest’s earliest two-goal lead in a home Premier League game since May 1999, built on pressing, counter pace and a striker who took his moment against his old club.
What The Result Means
The win lifts Forest out of the relegation zone to 16th on nine points, their first league win at the City Ground since April, and it pushes Manchester United into the bottom three. For City, the damage is at the top: they stay second on 21 points but now sit six points behind leaders Arsenal, who won earlier on Saturday, and they have gone nine matches across all competitions without a clean sheet. A side that won its first seven league games now goes into the international break having lost three in a row, something no top-flight team had done in that sequence for 122 years. Forest, meanwhile, finally have a home win, a home goal rush and a performance their manager can point to as the standard. The season turns for both clubs from here.
