Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim says his side showed the kind of mental strength that was missing last season after battling back to earn a 2-2 draw against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground.

United appeared on course for a fourth consecutive Premier League win — which would have been their best run since February 2024 — when Casemiro’s first-half header gave them the lead.
However, Forest struck twice in as many minutes after the break to turn the game on its head, before Amad Diallo’s spectacular volley salvaged a deserved point.

The result marked a year to the day since Amorim took charge at Old Trafford, and the Portuguese coach believes the performance showed how far his team has come.

“We lost control of the game for five minutes,” Amorim admitted. “But my feeling is that the players really tried — they worked hard during the week and they tried today.

In the past, if we had this kind of bad five minutes and conceded two goals, we wouldn’t have recovered. Today it’s a different feeling. You can sense that even if we can’t win, we’re not going to lose. That’s the mentality big teams need. Last season, we would have lost that game — and by more goals.”

A victory would have lifted United to second in the Premier League table — a remarkable turnaround from their 15th-place finish last season. Amorim said confidence and cohesion are growing within the squad.

“The confidence, of course, is completely different,” he said. “We’ve come from three good games, and now we understand each other better.

Football is like that — we had good moments, we scored, we felt in control at half-time. Then we suffered, but managed to recover, and that’s a very good feeling.”