Player Ratings: Man City 2-0 Nottingham Forest - Cityzens Maintain Perfect Start Despite Rodri's Red Card

Manchester City preserved their 100% start to the new Premier League season with a 2-0 victory at home to Nottingham Forest despite Rodri's red card.

Forest boss Steve Cooper lauded a trip to the Etihad Stadium as 'the toughest game in the world'. City lived up to that billing with a suffocating opening half-hour, racking up two goals and 90% possession.

However, a man advantage certainly helps a visiting team. City's unflappable Rodri uncharacteristically lost his cool at the start of the second half, leaving the champions with ten players and dramatically altering the complexion of the contest.

Pep Guardiola's side managed to hold off Forest without quite slipping towards a complete backs-against-the-wall performance.

Forest arrived in a stubborn block which had earned a hard-fought point when these sides last met in February. Yet, the visitors' resolve was pierced after just seven minutes. Long before the red mist descended, Rodri spotted the overlapping run of Kyle Walker - unshackled to outnumber Forest's five-man backline. City's skipper cushioned the ball down for Phil Foden to fizz the hosts into an early lead.

The devilishly slick interplay inside Forest's box came at the end of 46 consecutive passes, lasting an interminable two minutes and 16 seconds. Only one goal in the last 17 years of Premier League football has been preceded by more passes (per Opta).

Erling Haaland shrugged off his recent wastefulness with his first effort of Saturday's contest, crisply finishing off another dizzying sequence of positional interchange down City's right flank that left Forest's backline seeing stars in the sky-blue shirts.

Yet, the tide emphatically turned on Rodri's red card inside 60 seconds of the restart. Morgan Gibbs-White chased City's star midfielder into the corner, poking Rodri into a blind fury that compelled him to thrust both his hands around the neck of Forest's number ten.

While Cooper ditched Forest's defensive rearguard in search of a comeback, Guardiola hurriedly reshuffled his pack into a rare back-five, hunkering down for the entire second half.

City attempted just one shot with ten men and boasted only 31% possession but Ederson - who flirted with a hot-headed moment of his own - was hardly overworked in the club's 20th consecutive victory at Fortress Etihad.