Manchester United overcame illness issues to beatNottingham Forest and move to within a point of the top four.
After 19 minutes, Marcus Rashford was able to exploit Forest's failure to track his run by sweeping in a first-time shot from Christian Eriksen's corner routine.
The England forward turned provider three minutes later, cutting in from the left wing and rolling a pass to Antony Martial, who scored from the edge of the area.
Three minutes from time, Fred profited from an excellent through ball from fellow Brazilian Casemiro, to find the bottom corner, after Forest's keeper denied Antony, Martial andRashford.
Forest had a goal ruled out by the VAR just before the break, but they never recovered from that first half blow.
Since August 20th, Steve Cooper's men have not scored a goal away from the City Ground.
For United, it completed a fourth successive victory in all competitions and underscored the theory that the exit of CR7 won't have a negative effect on the rest of the season.
There has been a lot of talk about who will be the new strikers at United.
Even if the transfer fee for Gakpo would have priced him out of a move to Manchester United, he would still have been on their radar.
The best thing Ten Hag can hope for is for the situation to change.
It is not clear if he really needs reinforcements.
Injuries have limited Martial's involvement this season but the Frenchman now has five goals to his name and is effective in the number nine role even if he prefers to attack from wider positions
According to Ten Hag, 25-year-old Rashford was capable of scoring 20 league goals.
If Alejandro Garnacho had picked out the Englishman with a cut-back deep into the second half, he would have doubled his tally for the night, which would have taken him into double figures for the season.
With Garnacho and Anthony Elanga making decent contributions off the bench, Ten Hag will need to find someone who is both good enough and within their budget.
The running of elite officials in England was taken over by a former World Cup referee.
He will try to iron out some of the issues that are still being experienced with the VAR in the English game.
It took three minutes for Andy Madley and his colleagues at Stockley Park to solve the problem of Forest being on the wrong end of an incident just before the break.
Ryan Yates looked like he headed in. There was a potential problem which needed to be looked into. After studying the replays, it became clear that Boly diverted the ball.
Yates didn't deal with it. Boly's goal was ruled out because he was in an ineligible position.
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