Gary Locke made an immediate impact at bottom-of-the-table Cowdenbeath, guiding them to their first win of the year.
After seven successive defeats, the Fife side won 3-1 at Berwick Rangers with Robbie Buchanan, Brian Ross and Kris Renton all on target.
The arrival of a new manager always provokes a response and Locke will ask his players to show him it is not a one-off, starting with tomorrow's rescheduled match at home to title-chasing Elgin City.
Cowdenbeath can move to within two points of second-bottom Clyde with a victory and would lay the foundations to rebuild their season.
Elgin have not been in the most convincing form of late and lost 1-0 at Annan Athletic, who clambered above them into third place in the table.
David McKenna scored the only goal from the penalty spot after Mark Nicholson had handled.
Nicholson knows that Elgin blew a chance to put more pressure on the teams above them.
"It was a massive chance for us so it's hugely frustrating," the defender said.
"We know we're more than capable of challenging up there but we've thrown away too many games this season so it's going to be difficult to catch Forfar.
"We're just going to have to concentrate on securing a play-off place, then if we do that and we still have a chance of winning the league, we'll take it from there.
"We need to secure a play-off place first. We don't want to focus on chasing Forfar and then forget about what's happening behind us.
"We probably need another couple of wins to make sure of the play-offs but we'll need to make sure we play a lot better than we did at Annan.
"We were looking at potentially winning the league a few weeks ago. We had games in hand and we weren't that far behind.
"We have Forfar on Saturday so it would have set us up well for that if we'd won at Annan. We just have to move on and hopefully pick up a win at Cowdenbeath."
Forfar's lead at the top was cut to just three points after they lost 2-1 to Edinburgh City at Station Park.
Jim Lister gave them the lead but City his back with new arrival Derek Riordan scoring the equaliser and Lewis Allen netting the winner.
Arbroath closed the gap with a 1-0 win against Clyde at Gayfield, Mark Whatley supplying the only goal.
In-form Stirling Albion made it four consecutive wins by beating Montrose 3-1 at Links Park to move up to fifth.
Darren Smith, Ross Kavanagh and Connor McLaren all found the net and Stirling won in spite of having Liam Caddis sent off.
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