Manchester City lost two players to injury during their 3-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest. Enzo Maresca took off two defenders at half-time of the Premier League contest at the City Ground and explained afterwards that both had asked to come off.
Josko Gvardiol messed up for the first Forest goal after being caught in possession in his own half, while Marc Guehi failed to stop Liam Delap flying past him to fire in the second. Both men were withdrawn at the break, replaced by Nico O'Reilly and Matheus Nunes.
Second-half struggles and enforced changes
City showed slight improvement in the second half, although Nunes was undone for the third Forest goal, and Maresca confirmed that both changes had been enforced. "Both asked for change," he said. "Injury for Marc Guehi and Josko Gvardiol had some issue during the week, so it was just because they had problems."
Concerning defensive record
City have now conceded 17 goals in their last eight games, with no clean sheet since a 3-0 win at Anfield right at the very start of this block of fixtures. There were more costly individual errors on Saturday as Forest pounced on City mistakes to beat Gianluigi Donnarumma three times.
Maresca was more concerned with the City team as a collective though. He said his biggest concern was the lack of duels and second balls that the team won on a night where they failed to match the intensity of a Forest side hungry to respond to new manager Oliver Glasner.
"Today I think [it] has been general," he said "It was not about one player, in the first half we lost almost all the duels and contact, and against this team that fight for relegation if you don't match these things you're going to struggle."
