And there it is. The tentative restoring of normal service.
This was far from a flawless Manchester City performance. In normal times, when CIty are 14 games unbeaten and seven points clear and you find yourself scouring their dispays for any minuscule sign of weakness rather than hints of competence, one might point to the ease with which Forest carved out their own chances, and ruminate on the good fortune of encountering Chris Wood on what is at the present time a rare off night.
Certainly the one-on-one he slid wide when it looked for all the world like he was about to make it 1-1 stands out as a moment of potentially vast significance for both this night specifically and perhaps the entire season more generally.
City, clean sheet or not, remain determinedly unconvincing at the back. But from an attacking point of view at least this was fa, far more like it. Their recent drab efforts have been pockmarked with uncertainty. The build-up play that can look thoughtful and patient at its best has looked ponderous and devoid of wit.
That, at least, was rectified here. And let’s be real. From City’s current funk, a 3-0 home win over an upwardly mobile team that began the evening just a point below them in the table cannot be sniffed at. This was absolutely another banana skin upon which City were, on all recent evidence, capable of slipping.
An early goal certainly helped. You may want to sit down and prepare yourself for the sizzling take that follows, but its obviousness does not obscure its relevance. Kevin De Bruyne – he’s really good, isn’t he?
Having assisted that opening goal with a clever header back across Matz Sels he then stroked home the second with the kind of unfussy and unfussed composure City have sorely lacked.
Lord knows there are myriad reasons for City’s shambling effort in recent weeks, but it surely isn’t entirely a coincidence that De Bruyne has been able to play only a bit-part role in all four of their Premier League defeats and led this rejuvenating win from the front.
There were other notable improvements, mind. Jeremy Doku and Jack Grealish both had their best games of the season for City, which is meant as more of a compliment than it sounds, and stretched Forest’s defensive resources thinly across the pitch in a way City simply haven’t managed to do with any consistency during their month of despair.
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Doku laid on De Bruyne’s goal and then scored a fine third himself. It was his introduction that made City look ever so slightly less wretched at Anfield on Sunday; he’s had a good week.
For City, though, a wonderful Wednesday. If they were to be greedy they’d have liked a goal for Erling Haaland – who remains stuck on 12 and now level with Mo Salah – but that really is being greedy. Especially as he too was much improved in general play and swept the ball into the run of Doku for the third goal.
It was a goal City needed, too. Forest had started the second half brightly and full of the sort of belief that goes some way to explaining why bad runs from great teams can be doubly damaging: it’s not just the defeats themselves that hurt, but how much harder they can make subsequent wins.
Forest, for all their fine work this season, would not be emerging for the second half 2-0 down at the Etihad with this sort of belief in normal circumstances. They hassled and hurried City for a good 10 minutes before that breakaway Doku goal sorted everything else. Not even City were going to throw away a 3-0 goal lead deep into the second half. Not again, anyway.
Nuno Espirito Santo sensed it too, and decided discretion was the better part of valour. Forest are having a fine season, one more than capable of riding out a defeat here.
Within 10 minutes of City’s third goal, Chris Wood, Ola Aina and Morgan Gibbs-White had all been removed for the more meaningful battles ahead as both teams reached an unspoken agreement. City got to end their winless run, Forest returned home with dignity intact.
There was further good news for City, of course, with Liverpool dropping a couple of precious points late on at Newcastle. That wild 3-3 draw was just one of the many wild games in this Amazon midweek Premier League round.
You always get top-drawer Barclays from an Amazon midweek round, with nonsense aplenty and unpredictable results all over the place. We’d bloody love there to be more of them, but perhaps the main point there is to further highlight the sense of relief around the Etihad at completing this game in such a mercurial round of fixtures with precisely the kind of scoreline that would have raised not one single eyebrow when the fixture computer did its work back in the summer.
This was neither a result nor performance to eradicate all that has gone before this season – how could it, frankly – but it is a significant and determined step in the right direction. It’s the best City could have realistically asked for.