The only hope trophy for this session is the FA Cup, which I thing Manchester City will fight desperately to maintain it. Yes, Nottingham is a club which we cannot underestimate it because they are on 3rd place and have 6 different points with The City. This is certainly a surprising achievement for newly promoted clubs. Pep admit that if The forest not to be taken lightly, The squad must be careful with their attack strategy because they are always implementing defensive scheme to maximise the counter attack. Pep also mess around because his main attacker got injured, Haaland must rest about 5 week to get well, with this situation, The City is in a worrying phase where they could not get any title for this session.
For this big game Manchester City is having more pressure because they are fighting hard for staying into top four while their main striker is out for rest of season with injury things could be not easy for them while Nottingham Forest is already had fair chance of staying into top ranks which is big boost for them. Even their performance is surely average but their consistency and quality giving them good results while Citizens are not able to do things which were needed to have good end of their season new players are doing good job but still they needed more than they have done.
Now both teams will be play their best and no one take any chance which create problems for them because taking opponent lightly is meaning increasing problems for themselves matches are having time which will be good as Citizens will be able to enter with strong strategy.
The ideal final could be Manchester City vs Aston Villa. But it is not possible that there will be surprises, the underdog teams like Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest will strive hard to go to the final. Manchester City in recovery fase to back on track, they just find their performance on the last minutes, so it could be hard to play consistently like the last session. The City squad is still finding how they stabilize, Pep cannot rely on on Omar Marmous because he is still on adaption phase, while Grealish is look awkward on his new position on center, he also on adaption fase on that position, because he is not a real attacker like Haaland.