BREAKING: Nottingham Forest Boss Nuno Espirito Santos gives a BRUTAL seven-words response when asked why he surprisingly  took Captain Ryan Yates off against Manchester City

BREAKING: Nottingham Forest Boss Nuno Espirito Santos gives a BRUTAL seven-words response when asked why he surprisingly  took Captain Ryan Yates off against Manchester City

Nuno Espirito Santo delivers blunt seven-word response when asked why he took captain Ryan Yates off 

Nottingham Forest missed the chance to send out a statement to the Premier League as Manchester City offered a very healthy dose of reality at the Etihad Stadium.

Bernardo Silva and Kevin De Bruyne had City two to the good inside 32 minutes, with Jeremy Doku scoring a brilliant counter-attacking goal in the second half.

Forest were praised by De Bruyne for surprising City but they still coped extremely well with any threat that the Reds carried throughout the contest.

The Reds did compete though. In the other two visits to the Etihad Stadium since promotion, Forest have folded and played really poorly but that wasn’t the case here.

An intriguing situation happened at the half-time interval and it saw Ryan Yates – the Forest captain substituted with Nuno Espirito Santo being forced to clear things up afterwards.

Nuno Espirito Santo shares why Ryan Yates was substituted

The Forest head coach isn’t afraid to make big calls and he made one at City that might not have proved overly popular in the eyes of some.

Yates is often defended to the hills given that he’s an academy graduate but against City, he didn’t cover himself in glory.

As City were making it 2-0, Yates lay on the floor after making a feeble attempt to tackle Doku and then throwing himself on the floor trying to tempt the referee into helping him out.

It’s a trait that has crept into his game and Yates is a far better player when he cuts that stuff out and focuses on playing football.

When quizzed on the decision to substitute Yates, Espirito Santo delivers a pretty snappy response to the media.

He told Nottinghamshire Live: “It was a (tactical) decision. He is OK.”

Yates needs to stick to what he’s good at

This wasn’t a vintage Yates performance by any stretch and for large parts of the first half he looked way out of his depth.

As we know, Yates is now capable of playing at this level and it’s important that he maintains that belief and goes back to what we know he’s good at.

The Forest captain is a dab hand at winding up opposition players and harassing opposition players out of possession but last night there was none of that.

Instead, he tried to buy cheap free kicks but with Michael Oliver one of the best in the business, he was simply having none of it.

It was absolutely the right decision for Espirito Santo to hook Yates and now he will face an anxious wait to see if he’s kept his place in the team for Saturday’s trip to Manchester United.