Manchester City’s title aspirations suffered a severe setback on Saturday as they slumped to a third straight Premier League defeat, conceding twice in the first half before losing 3-1 to Nottingham Forest to fall six points behind leaders Arsenal.

City reeled off seven straight wins to start the campaign, but they were beaten 2-1 away by Aston Villa before losing 1-0 at home to Brighton.

Champions Arsenal top of the standings on 27 points after 10 games, and City coach Enzo Maresca blamed his side’s woes on a lack of intensity as Forest scored their first home goals and secured their first home win of the season.

“In the first half, when you don’t match the intensity, when you lose all the duels, it’s difficult, and then when we want to react, it’s too late,” Maresca told Sky Sports.

“In these kinds of games, first of all, you need to match the intensity. You need to try to win duels - otherwise, it’s always complicated. I think (in the) first half we were not good enough in terms of duels. Second balls, we lost all of them, and then when we try to react, we were 2-0 down, and in football, it’s always complicated.”

City gave the ball away cheaply for all three goals that they conceded, with striker Liam Delap, who had only scored once in eight league games this season, netting two sensational strikes to carry his side to victory.

“It’s been coming, and we’ve been performing like that every week and not putting it in the net. Today we showed we can put them in the net so we’re all happy,” Delap said.

“We did everything right, we got the three points and we’re going to be happy going into the international break.”

Forest coach Oliver Glasner sprinted down the sideline to celebrate Delap’s second goal, and he could hardly hide his joy as his side moved up to 16th place on nine points, out of the relegation zone.

“It was a very good day to play Manchester City but, to be honest, today, the energy in the team and at the City Ground was so incredible that it would have been tough for every team in the world to play against us today,” he said.

“All the credit to the players and our fans for this amazing Saturday evening.”