(Football news) Injury plagued Manchester United secured a 2-0 victory against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on Sunday, thereby taking the third place in the Premier League table after Newcastle United lost 3-0 to Aston Villa on Saturday. Fifth place Tottenham Hotspur lost 2-3 Bournemouth and are now six points behind the Red Devils on the league table. Antony scored the opening goal in the 32nd minute and provided the assist for Diogo Dalot’s goal in the 76th minute. 

Nottingham Forest have lost 10 games in a row to Manchester United across all competitions including four times this season. They could have got a penalty in the first half when the scores were 0-0 when the ball appeared to strike Harry Maguire’s hand but VAR ruled against the incident. Taino Awoniyi had a good opportunity in the opening 45 minutes with one shot cleared off the line while Scott McKenna hit the post. Felipe’s header went over the bar from two yards out in the second half.

In team news for Nottingham Forest, they made four changes to the side that lost to Aston Villa with Renan Lodi, Scott McKenna, Remo Freuler and Taiwo Awoniyi back while Joe Worrall, Jonjo Shelley and Harry Toffolo were on the bench while Chekhov Kouyate was injured. Jesse Lingard was named on the bench against his former side. As for Manchester United, Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof featured at centre-back while Diogo Dalot was on the left. Christian Eriksen replaced Marcel Sabitzer after the Austrian was injured in the warm-up.

Speaking after the match, Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper said “I think it was a penalty [against Maguire], it’s a really poor error. The referee should see it but I understand why he hasn’t because of the angle and the number of players. Why is VAR hasn’t is not right? It’s another moment that will put big scrutiny on VAR. There’s been a lot of negative decisions over the last few weeks and that’s another one. 

“I’m not going to stand here and say it’s the reason we didn’t win the game, although it could be a second yellow and a red for Maguire, and we could have scored the penalty and gone 1-0 up. It has a big impact, I’m really biting my tongue because I don’t want to use it as an excuse for why we lost the game or why we’re in the league position we are in, it’s not. But it’s a bad error. How [VAR] Andy Madley hasn’t seen needs real looking at.”

Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag said “A solid performance. A well deserved win. The only criticism I could say, it had to be higher, the score. It had to be 3-0 or 4-0. We missed a lot of chances there. You want to score and finish and kill the game in the early moments. That’s always important. In big games you don’t create so many chances, so you have to score them. We need more goal scorers and I’m happy with Antony. He scored a goal, gave an assist. 

“His start in the game wasn’t that good. I think twice he had to make another choice to bring the ball to Eriksen in a cutback. But after he came into the game he was continually a threat for the opponent. He’s definitely making progress. Against Everton he created many chances and misses and so I’m happy for him today he scored. He had another one, if Aaron Wan-Bissaka was not blocking the shot!”

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