Seconds after Morgan Gibbs-White curled in Nottingham Forest’s fantastic winning goal with 82 minutes gone, he celebrated by soaking up the adulation from the Trent End and putting his index fingers to his ears. It is a tactic Erik ten Hag may need to employ to shutout the never-ending noise surrounding his position and this flaky and unpredictable Manchester United side. The volume will only increase after this, a damning 14th defeat of the season in all competitions. The last time they lost as many games before the turn of the year? That was 1930-31, when they were relegated to the Second Division.
Marcus Rashford cancelled out Nicolás Domínguez’s second-half strike, giving United hope of staging another late comeback, but Gibbs-White wrapped his right foot around the ball from the edge of the box, in effect throwing another log on United’s fire. In 10 days Nuno Espírito Santo, who replaced Steve Cooper with Forest lurking above the relegation zone, seems to have built a more fluent and spirited operation than Ten Hag has mustered in 20 months. Nothing embodied Forest’s togetherness more than Ryan Yates, the Forest captain, and the substitute Neco Williams teaming up to win the ball from Alejandro Garnacho close to the corner flag nearest the away end with a couple of minutes left.
