Goals from Bernardo Silva, De Bruyne and Jeremy Doku ended a run of four straight defeats in the top-flight and secured a first win in eight games across all competitions for Pep Guardiola’s side.
Naturally, De Bruyne was quizzed after inspiring his side to victory as to whether they can take confidence from that result, and his response was to issue a challenge to his team-mates.
"To be honest, it's not the moment to look at that," he said on Amazon Prime Video. "It's been a hard period, we have to accept the challenge.
"The Premier League is harder and harder, we know that everybody is becoming a really good, tough team to play and everyone is taking points off everybody.
"We have to improve as a team first, try to win games and we'll see in a couple of months where we are and hopefully we've improved a bit and we are a bit closer. But for the moment, it's not the time."
De Bruyne made his first City start since September against Forest and justified his selection by contributing a goal and an assist in the first half. However, his starting position was somewhat unusual as both he and Jack Grealish occupied the central spaces.
That left Silva and Doku as the wide players, but even the Belgian international was at a loss when attempting to go into detail about Guardiola’s tactical setup.
"I don't know how to explain it, it was more like a 3-3-4 I would say," De Bruyne added. "We didn't expect Nottingham to go man-for-man so we had to adjust a little bit.
"They were leaving Nathan \[Ake\] free, the first half an hour we did well and then we struggled and then the second half was a different game when they played five at the back."
Next up for City is a trip to London as they face Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Saturday before meeting Juventus away from home in the Champions League and then the small matter of the Manchester derby.
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