City’s suffering goes on, United hit 30-year low, Norris leads McLaren 1-2 in race for title

Let me take you back to those halcyon days of December 1994, when footballers were still allowed to tackle, just, VAR wasn’t even a twinkle in an evil inventors eye, the offside rule was almost understandable and everyone knew what handball meant.

East 17s Christmas Classic, Stay Another Day, was top of the charts in the UK, Dumb & Dumber had just been released in the cinemas, and a certain Eric Cantona was bestriding the Premier League like a colossus.

It was also the last time Nottingham Forest won at Old Trafford, or least that was the case until a few hours ago when Manchester United’s fall hit another new low. So, let’s start with some painful home truths for the red half of the city, courtesy of owner Jim Ratcliffe.

Not even mid-table mediocrity

You know things are bad when a club’s owner is talking about making “difficult and unpopular” decisions, and describing their own team as mediocre.

Even before his side’s 3-2 defeat at home to Forest, Jim Ratcliffe was telling fanzine United We Stand that the club “was not elite” and major change was needed to reverse that.

Having only just arrived, manager Ruben Amorim can be fairly certain of his position, although whether the same can be said for goalkeeper Andre Onana and the rest of the United defence remains to be seen. Nikola Milenkovic, Morgan Gibbs-White and Chris Wood did the damage for the visitors, with Rasmus Hojlund and Bruno Fernandes scoring for the home side.

Defeat left United 13th in the table, and their 19 points from 15 games is the team’s lowest tally at this stage of a season since 1986-87. Forest, in contrast, are up to fifth.

A blue, blue Christmas

Spotting a theme yet? We’ve gone from East 17 to Elvis, which would be a fun six degrees of separation to work out. Anyway, enough of the mournful musings of the king of rock 'n' roll, its time to focus on the suffering of the blue half of Manchester.