Manchester City are back. In second place.
For 84 minutes it looked as though Pep Guardiola's resurgent side were steamrollering their way to the top of the Premier League again, completely dominating a game to the point that it looked as though it wouldn't matter that they had missed enough good chances to repeat their 6-0 victory in the return fixture. But one, late switch-off allowed Forest to equalise from nowhere and put another different spin on a title race that has become dizzying.
It is staggering that not two weeks have passed since City lost poorly to Tottenham and yet went one bounce of the Aston Villa goalkeeper's head of moving two points clear of Arsenal. As it was, the Gunners are galvanised and can take as much heart from the fact that a City side that looked back to their cold-blooded title-winning best have slipped up again.
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While Puma would probably dispute the colour descriptions, it was fitting that Guardiola's team - sporting Bernardo Silva again at left-back and Phil Foden back making his first start since the derby - wore their third kit of yellow-and-black stripes. The visitors swarmed all over the red shirts in front of them straight from the off, taking the sting out of a boisterous home crowd looking to give their team any advantage they could.
Jack Grealish and Ilkay Gundogan both had efforts blocked on the edge of the six-yard box in the opening ten minutes, while Kyle Walker did well to sweep up any attempted counters. With the first Forest centre-back booked not long after for a late lunge on Grealish, it looked as though the game was there for City to take.
Despite a whopping 86 per cent possession in the first half, and plenty of threat, City could not get the breakthrough. Zero shots on target against Keylor Navas neatly illustrated how their accuracy was not quite there in spite of most teammates having a go.
For all their defending seemed desperate, Forest did effectively use former Atletico defender Felipe - one of three in their XI to have played in the Champions League against City just last season - to mark Haaland out of the game by sticking extremely tight on him. For all City created opportunities, none of them were falling to the man with 32 goals.
However, this rejuvenated City team are not in the mood to let things like that keep them down in a way that even a few weeks ago they might have. Minutes before the break, Jack Grealish did what he does so well at the moment and picked the right ball, rolling it across the edge of the box for new left-back Bernardo to smash past Keylor Navas without needing a touch to set himself.
The second half threw up a number of possible flashpoints as City missed chance after chance. Phil Foden and Aymeric Laporte missed glorious opportunities inside the opening 10 minutes, then Haaland - having finally found some space - went down far too easily under Worrall's touch wanting a penalty that was never on; Guardiola was booked for protesting that decision.
Moments later, it felt like time for Haaland to pack up and go home. Foden's shot could only be parried by Navas and the rebound fell to the Norwegian inside the box, who had one go come back off the bar before taking a touch and blasting wildly over when the goal was gaping. Forest, and their fans, sensed that they could make these errors costly.
Just when it was looking like they hadn't counted on a City side that was good enough to keep their feet on Forest necks all afternoon though, Chris Wood tapped in at the back post after Morgan Gibbs-White had jinked his way through some tired challenges. Having had the swagger of the team that have won four out of the last five Premier League titles, City folded at the wrong moment to give a Champions League flavour to the match ahead of their match with RB Leipzig.
Where it felt that City could finally look beyond one performance as their quality and consistency picked up, needlessly dropping two points means it is back to the drawing board for a team still struggling to put any kind of winning run together. With trips to Leipzig, Bournemouth, and Bristol in the next fortnight, a stronger mentality will be needed for the squad to make real progress.
It is now five league games since their last clean sheet, and improvement will be needed at both ends after missing so many chances here. However small the margins are, they evidently need to be squeezed further.
In another world, you could write this off as a rare off-day for City. They dominated opponents who have an excellent home record and, as he proved after the Community Shield, these kinds of horror shows do not happen too regularly for Haaland.
But there have already been too many moments like this for the Blues to match the heights of their previous standards, and they will need to do better if they are to get the better of Arsenal this season. The win at the Emirates felt monumental for their season, yet losing two points here has undercut it.
City have won titles in recent years by responding emphatically to setbacks. It was some turnaround after Tottenham to get themselves in a position where they could top the league, but they are not quite back in their groove.
An unpredictable season continues to entertain.
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