How the players rated as the Cityzens snapped their seven-game streak without a victory in emphatic fashion at the Etihad Stadium
At last, Manchester City have won a football match. Thirty-nine days after beating Southampton and seven games later, Pep Guardiola's side were reminded what victory felt like as they beat Nottingham Forest 3-0 on Wednesday, inspired by a vintage Kevin De Bruyne performance. After losing four league games in a row for the first time in his career, Guardiola made four changes to the team that had lost to Liverpool and fallen 11 points behind the leaders, recalling De Bruyne, Jack Grealish, Jeremy Doku and Josko Gvardiol. Bernardo Silva scored his first goal since the Community Shield to get City off to a comfortable start, although there was a big scare when a De Bruyne back-pass made its way to Forest's top scorer Chris Wood, but the Kiwi hitman fired wide.
De Bruyne breathed a big sigh of relief and punished the Tricky Trees seconds later with a piledriver high into the net. Doku then rounded off the victory with a splendid individual goal, cutting inside from the left and ramming the ball home.