Late Rayan Cherki winner for Man City puts title pressure back on Arsenal

Good morning and welcome to live coverage of the Premier League match between Nottingham Forest, who start the day in 17th, and Manchester City, in second, for whom a victory would take them back to the top at least until Arsenal’s 3pm home match against Brighton is settled. Forest, who beat City at the City Ground last Larch, have taken 13 of 27 points under Sean Dyche, their third manager of the season, losing to Bournemouth and Brighton at home, but clobbered Tottenham 3-0 by the Trent 13 days ago before losing at Fulham in their last game before Christmas.

Manchester City, by contrast, are on a run of five successive league wins but have already lost three times on the road – at Brighton, Villa and Newcastle – and their players come into the match fresh from the weighing scales, deprived of their maple syrup-glazed parsnips and pigs in blankets as Pep stole Christmas. Ibrahim Sangaré and Willy Boly are absent for Forest at Afcon while Ryan Yates, Ola Aina, Chris Wood and Dan Ndoye won’t be back until the third round of the FA Cup on their current recovery schedule. For City, Omar Marmoush and Rayan Aït-Nouri are also at the Africa Cup of Nations, Jérémy Doku, Oscar Bobb and John Stones won’t be be back until next week. Mateo Kovacic is out for a few months yet but Guardiola had good news about his Ballon D’Or-winning midfielder, Rodrigo, who is “much, much better” and could be involved today.

While the joy of the fixture list is its promise of constant renewal – you can change your own fortunes in each match – and it is tempting not to dwell on the past, both sides will come together to pay tribute to Forest’s greatest player, John Robertson, who died this week at the age of 72. Of all the great left wingers I was privileged to watch while growing up, he was, for a couple of years, the best. George Best was essentially finished by the time I started to go to matches regularly but Robertson could be both as magnificent a dribbler as Eddie Gray and as great a crosser of the ball as Steve Heighway. Perhaps his only equal would have been Tom Finney. Peace be upon him.