Manchester United were consigned to a second consecutive defeat as Nottingham Forest emerged as deserved 3-2 winners at Old Trafford on Saturday evening.
Three short days after losing 2-0 to Arsenal, United were beaten again by an aerially aggressive outfit. Nikola Milenkovic’s first-half header was cancelled out by Rasmus Hojlund’s quick-fire equaliser, but the visitors romped into an unassailable lead within ten minutes of the restart.
Two decidedly unconvincing pieces of goalkeeping from Andre Onana gifted goals to Morgan Gibbs-White and Chris Wood. Bruno Fernandes‘ crisp strike proved no more than a consolation as United toiled to defeat.
Forest’s first victory at Old Trafford in almost 30 years lifted the visitors up to fifth in the Premier League table, while United are languishing in 13th place.
How the game unfolded
“We’re not one of the best teams in the league,” Ruben Amorim warned during the week. United repeatedly proved his point under the Old Trafford floodlights.
Milenkovic thundered Nottingham Forest in front inside the opening two minutes, taking advantage of a poorly defended corner. The visitors struck the crossbar from another set piece in the first half, but United largely had the better of the opening 45 minutes from open play.
Fernandes particularly enjoyed himself dropping between the lines. The Portuguese skipper greased the wheels of slick move, slipping a pass to Manuel Ugarte who punched an excellent ball into the stride of Alejandro Garnacho. Rasmus Hojlund was on hand to snaffle up the rebound in the 18th minute.
However, Forest managed to go in at the break level at 1-1 before regrouping impressively. Gibbs-White blasted the visitors back in front within minutes of the restart. The midfielder’s tame effort from the edge of the box flummoxed Onana, who sunk to his knees while the ball squirmed over the goal line.
If United had been inspired by Forest’s opener, they effectively imploded immediately after falling behind again. Chris Wood’s looping header spent an age soaring through the crisp Manchester air, tumbling over Matthijs de Ligt, Onana and beyond an oddly lackadaisical Lisandro Martinez, who calmly watched the ball bounce off the inside of the post and into the back of the net.
Fernandes shook United out of their downward spiral with an excellent strike from the D shortly after the hour mark, but the fightback fizzled out long before the final whistle. Amorim is still very much at the start of his Manchester United tenure, but his opening three weeks and five matches have proven the scale of the task he is undertaking.
Check out the player ratings from Man Utd vs Nottingham Forest here.
Arsenal needed 13 corners to score twice against Manchester United on Wednesday night. Nottingham Forest found the net with their first set piece.
Lisandro Martinez’s diminutive stature was a constant topic of debate during his first few months in Manchester, but has rarely been brought up in the subsequent years. However, the eight inches which Martinez gave up to Milenkovic was painfully obvious inside the opening two minutes. The towering Serb eased the centre-back aside like a playful older brother before nodding Forest in front.
Height can only explain so much. The 5’10 Jota Silva also found space inside United’s penalty area to strike the angle of post and crossbar from a first-half set piece.
Wood’s bizarre second-half effort from open play was the fifth headed goal Manchester United have conceded this season. Only one Premier League team – relegation-battling Wolverhampton Wanderers – have shipped more headers this term.
“A goalkeeper is so important,” Amorim noted after Onana almost singlehandedly ensured that United avoided defeat to Ipswich Town during his debut outing. The divisive shot-stopper recovered from a shaky adaptation to life at Old Trafford to excel over the past six months. Heading into this weekend’s fixtures, Onana had prevented more goals than any other Premier League goalkeeper according to the quantity and quality of shots on target he had faced.
That impressive record was dented on Saturday. As Gibbs-White lined up his shot from 20 yards, the entire Old Trafford crowd and the Forest playmaker himself expected the in-form goalkeeper to deal with his effort. “When I first saw the scuff I thought, ‘Ah he’s going to pick it up.'”
Much to the bemusement of everyone, Onana did not pick the ball up. Instead, he dipped to his right-hand side in slow motion, wafting out a weak left wrist which only served to brush the ball into the opposite corner.
Wood’s header was almost worse. Onana ambled about with the depth perception of one-eyed man as the ball sailed across his goal. An oddly inept Martinez didn’t help the goalkeeper, but the blame should be shared rather than halved.
Questions were raised before Amorim’s arrival as to how, exactly, he would fit Fernandes into his signature 3-4-2-1 system. The Portuguese coach has seemingly been racked by that same uncertainty, shifting his captain all over the pitch throughout his brief spell in the dugout.
Fernandes was nominally stationed on the right side of United’s front three on Saturday, yet roamed around to devastating effect. Ryan Yates was left swatting at thin air for much of the game, failing to even stamp on his fellow captain’s shadow for much of the contest.
In a game of peaks and troughs for the hosts, Fernandes had his own highs and lows. It was the enigmatic number eight who gave the ball away for Gibbs-White’s goal.
Fernandes can be accused of many things, but passivity is not one of them. United’s skipper roused his teammates with a brilliant strike in the 61st minute. After swatting a pass out wide to Amad Diallo, the front-foot forward was presented with the ball once again 20 yards from goal, whipping a venomous effort beyond Matz Sels.
A pair of faulty batteries in the assistant referee’s communication pack slowed United down as they sought another equaliser, but the surprise removal of Fernandes with 15 minutes remaining was the real killer blow to the hosts’ mounting momentum.
