38’

United chased the second too hard, the crowd’s roar dragging bodies forward, and in the thirty-eighth minute the discipline frayed. A United move broke down on the edge of the Forest box and Casemiro was left alone in the center as Forest poured through a loose duel, three red shirts caught upfield.

Demien wheeled and sprinted the instant the ball was lost, hunting back forty yards, but the break had started behind his shoulder and his legs couldn’t fold the distance in time. Forest worked it wide and clipped it back toward the penalty spot, where the shot cannoned off Martinez’s sliding leg — thud — and spun up into a loop that sent Onana the wrong way entirely, the ball dropping over him and under the bar.

MANCHESTER UNITED 1-2 NOTTINGHAM FOREST

The Forest corner erupted again while a groan rolled down the home tiers, and a voice near the tunnel screamed "SORT IT OUT! SAME THING EVERY WEEK!" Demien stood with his hands laced behind his head, chest heaving from the run that hadn’t been enough, and Onana hammered a fist into the turf — thud — before dragging himself up to fetch the ball from the net.

The whistle for half-time came two minutes later, and Demien walked toward the tunnel with sweat stinging his eyes, the scoreboard above him glowing 1-2 despite forty-five minutes where the ball through him had been United’s only calm.

Manchester United Dressing Room

Half-Time

Ten Hag stood at the board and didn’t raise his voice, which made the room lean toward him harder.

"Look." He stabbed a finger at the empty space behind the midfield line drawn in marker. "Every time we score, you run here, and you leave this. They are not better than us. They are calmer than us." His hand swept across the three midfield positions. "Casemiro does not chase alone. Bruno — not every ball is the killer ball. Demien."

Demien looked up from where he sat with a water bottle hanging from his fingers.

"Keep the platform," Ten Hag said. "But when their line is tired and standing still — go through it. You felt it twice already. Trust it."

Demien tipped his head once and drank, saying nothing, because there was nothing to add that his second half wouldn’t say better.

Old Trafford

Second Half

46’ - 57’

United came out tighter, the gaps between the lines shorter, and Demien sat in front of the back four like a tripwire. He read a Forest pass into midfield in the forty-ninth minute and stepped in front of it before it arrived, then in the fifty-second minute, as Forest tried to spring the same central break that had hurt United twice, his N’Golo Kanté’s Everywhere at Once technique fired — that uncanny sense of where the ball was about to go, dragging him across the passing lane a full second before Gibbs-White slid it through.

His 84 Tackling met the ball cleanly, no contact on the man, the loose ball pinging up to his own boot, and he turned and fed Casemiro before Forest could even register the counter had died. The away bench threw their arms up in frustration while a ripple of applause rolled around the United tiers, a few voices near the halfway line shouting "GO ON, RED! THAT’S IT!" as the home end finally felt the game tilting back toward them.

58’

It broke in the fifty-eighth minute. A Bruno shot ricocheted off a Forest block and rolled out to the edge of the box, and Demien arrived onto it first while Williams burst out of the line to shut him down, the defender’s eyes locked on Demien’s right foot because everyone in the ground remembered the thirty-yard rocket at Tottenham.

Demien gave him exactly that. He dropped his shoulder and drew his right foot back into the full shooting motion, and Williams committed everything to the block, throwing his body down and across to smother the strike.

His Johan Cruyff’s Turn Innovator technique cut the shot dead at the last instant — the foot that should have struck the ball instead chopped across the top of it, dragging it inside and behind his own standing leg in one sharp scissoring motion — and Williams’s momentum carried him sprawling past empty air. The lane to goal opened clean in front of Demien with the keeper still set for the shot that hadn’t come.

He didn’t smash it. His 80 Finishing rolled a low side-foot into the bottom corner with the ball barely leaving the grass, the keeper flinging himself the wrong way after committing to the original shooting angle, and the net snapped tight at the foot of the post — fsshh.

MANCHESTER UNITED 2-2 NOTTINGHAM FOREST

The roar came up so hard it seemed to drop down again off the roof, a single wall of sound, and Demien turned toward the Stretford End with both arms wide. Bruno hit him first, jumping onto his back with an arm hooked across his chest, shouting straight into his ear, "GO ON, KID! THAT’S YOURS!" Rashford grabbed two fists of his shirt from the front, face split wide, yelling "AGAIN! WE GO AGAIN!" while behind them "United! United! United!" rolled out of the lower tier in three-beat pulses, hands clapping above heads across the whole stand.

Commentary Booth

"What a piece of skill — and what composure!" the commentator nearly shouted. "At Tottenham he beat the keeper with raw power. Here he sells Williams the shot, chops it past him, and passes it into the corner. That is not a one-trick player. That is a footballer."

72’

United had the scent of it now, and Demien sat at the center of everything, the engine carrying him from one box edge to the other. In the seventy-second minute Forest had dropped deep again, expecting the shot or the switch, and they left a thread of a gap between two retreating defenders.

His Mesut Özil’s Eye-of-Needle technique found it — that ability to see and play the pass that shouldn’t exist — and he stabbed the ball through the narrowing channel with the inside of his boot before the gap could close, his 88 Short Passing threading it between the two defenders’ legs and out the other side into Rashford’s run.

Rashford took it inside the box, drew the keeper a step, and cut it back square along the ground, and Bruno arrived onto it at full stride and lashed it into the roof of the net — thwack-fsshh.

MANCHESTER UNITED 3-2 NOTTINGHAM FOREST

"Glory Glory Man United" erupted out of the Stretford End and swept around the bowl, scarves up, and Bruno didn’t run to the corner — he ran straight at Demien and pressed their foreheads together for half a second, gripping the back of his neck, shouting, "AGAIN! YOU SEE IT BEFORE ANYONE!" before the rest piled in around them. A man in the second tier near the tunnel cupped his hands and bellowed "WALTER, SON! BRILLIANT!" into the noise, one voice swallowed instantly by the song rolling over the top of it.

Commentary Booth

"One goal and two created in his first start!" the commentator said over the song rolling round the ground. "That pass is threaded through bodies most players never even see. They’re not singing his name yet — that takes time at this club — but they will be if he keeps producing this."

84’

But Forest wouldn’t lie down, and the same flaw waited to bite. In the eighty-fourth minute a Forest corner curled in and the first header dropped loose in a crowd, and United got pinned deep — Demien tracking back to the edge of the six-yard box, Casemiro grappling with a runner inside, the whole defense sucked toward the ball.

Forest recycled it wide and whipped a second ball back in, and their substitute climbed above a static United marker at the back post to thump a header down past Onana before anyone could close him — thud-fsshh.

MANCHESTER UNITED 3-3 NOTTINGHAM FOREST

The song died in the home stands and curdled into a roar of fury, fists thrown toward the pitch, a thousand voices at once — "WHO’S MARKING? WHO IS MARKING HIM?" Demien’s hands dropped to his hips and his head tipped back toward the floodlights, breath sawing in his chest, because he’d put United in front with a goal and a thread of a pass and it had still come apart at the one part of the game his boots couldn’t reach from the middle.

Commentary Booth

"This is a wild one now," the commentator said. "United have scored three at Old Trafford and somehow they are level. They have only themselves to blame — they cannot stop conceding from these second phases."

88’ - 90+3’

United threw themselves at the winner. Demien switched it wide to Antony again in the eighty-eighth minute, the same flat diagonal that had carved Forest open before, but this time two white shirts crowded the wing and smothered the cross. Bruno dragged a shot over the bar from the edge. Rashford wriggled a yard of space in the box and saw his effort blocked by a thrown body.

Three minutes went up on the board and Old Trafford screamed for the goal, but Forest threw everything in front of everything, heads and legs and chests, and cleared each ball that dropped into the box.

The whistle came.

Fweeeeet! Fweeeeet! Fweeeeeeeeet!

FULL TIME: MANCHESTER UNITED 3-3 NOTTINGHAM FOREST

A scattered boo rose from the back of the Stretford End and died out under a heavier sound — applause with an edge under it, hands coming together while heads shook, because three goals at home had bought a single point. Demien stood bent with his hands on his knees in the center circle, breath dragging, watching the Forest players sprint the length of the pitch to slide in front of their own end as if they’d won the thing.

The system surfaced as he straightened up.

「MATCH COMPLETE」

「First Manchester United Start: Completed」

「Pass Accuracy: 89%」

「Progressive Passes/Switches: 6」

「Chances Created: 2」

「Defensive Actions: 5」

「Reward: 70 MP」

「Bonus: Goal Contribution In First Start」

「Goal: 1 | Assist: 1」

「Bonus Reward: 5 SP」

「Current Balance: 596 TP | 351 SP | 938 MP」

He let it fade, because the goal and the assist sat lighter on him than the two points left on the grass.

Manchester United Dressing Room

Full-Time

Bruno dropped onto the bench and dragged his shirt off over his head before he spoke, the frustration still riding under the words.

"You were unplayable. Goal, the pass for mine, you ran the whole midfield." He balled the shirt and threw it at the laundry bin. "And we draw. At home. This club, I swear it finds new ways."

Casemiro lowered himself down beside Demien with the slow care of a man whose legs had given everything, and he kept his voice level. "This is the difference now. From the bench, you change one thing and you walk off. Starting, you carry all of it — the good and the conceded. You’ll feel that one longer than the goal."

Ten Hag didn’t come to him with praise in front of the room. He stood by the door and pitched it at all of them.

"Three goals at Old Trafford wins the match. If it does not, the problem is structure. Every one of you, not one of you."

The players went quiet over their boots, and the room held that for a while.

Later, when the crowd of bodies had thinned and Demien sat alone with sweat drying cold on his boots, Ten Hag stopped beside him on his way past.

"You can start."

A pause, just long enough to land.

"Now learn how to win from the start."

Demien turned the words over without answering, his eyes on the boots between his feet, because they acknowledged everything the night had been and refused to call it finished — a goal, an assist, his name sung from the Stretford End.