It was a day when the FA Cup romantics could see the script for Nuno Espírito Santo and Nottingham Forest, something to further embellish the manager’s hero status and the club’s finest season in at least 30 years. It was one when Pep Guardiola and Manchester City refused to entertain it.
City led from the second minute through Rico Lewis’s second goal of the season and when Josko Gvardiol thumped home a header on 51 minutes shortly after a glaring miss by Anthony Elanga, on as a Forest substitute, it felt over. That Forest were repeatedly on the wrong side of the finest of margins thereafter only deepened their pain.
