Delap’s Nottingham Forest stunners hand Manchester City third league defeat in a row

Wait long enough, and results will come to reflect performances. Manchester City may have won their first seven games of the season, but they always looked vulnerable, and now have lost three in a row. Nottingham Forest may have been second bottom but, other than the twin curses of missing chances giving away daft goals, they seemed to be playing reasonably well. Put the two together, and the outcome was a dramatic regression to the mean. It turns out the stats were right, after all.

Liam Delap scored twice to remind people just what a good striker he can be. Oliver Glasner, after last week’s anger, can breathe a little easier in his job. And Enzo Maresca remains a paradox, a manager obsessive about control whose teams always seem oddly susceptible to direct running.

More to follow.