Sport

Nottingham Forest could be in for a difficult season

It has been an interesting couple of seasons for Nottingham Forest. After gaining promotion to the Premier League in 2022, the club signed 24 players in preparation for their new challenge, before breaching Profit and Sustainability rules a year later, incurring a points deduction. Last season, they were surprise Champions League contenders, reaching an FA Cup semi-final too. Now they are seen as a model club for growth and development, but like many others before them, face a difficult crossroads.

Though their attempts to break into Europe’s premier club competition were unsuccessful, they finished seventh and qualified for the Europa Conference League and could even be upgraded to the Europa League, due to an ongoing argument over Crystal Palace’s eligibility. Forest were an incredibly consistent force last season under the stewardship of Nuno Espirito Santo, whose simplistic tactical approach got the best of his team.

With a powerful target man in Chris Wood, who embodied the club’s shock rise by scoring a career best 20 league goals, up front, flanked by the electric pace of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Anthony Elanga, Forest became a monstrous counter-attacking threat. Their talisman, Morgan Gibbs-White, linked everything together; his ability to dribble with the ball and turn into space made him the ideal playmaker. Though nobody expected Forest to put up such a fight at the top, there were warning signs of it the previous Christmas. In Nuno’s second game in charge on Boxing Day 2023, they turned Newcastle over 3-1 at St James’ Park. Wood scored a hat-trick and Elanga, Hudson-Odoi and Gibbs-White ran riot.

Recruitment was a huge part of their change in fortunes, too. When they created all the headlines with their scattergun approach, their justification was a need to rebuild the squad completely with a number of players leaving. With clubs struggling after being promoted from the Championship in the last couple of years, there is a suggestion that Forest’s approach should be copied; build a squad good enough to compete and take the points deduction, expecting there to be enough of a deficit to the relegation zone, before building further in the next PSR cycle.

But things got better with a more condensed, thought-out strategy, making fewer, but greater quality additions. Elliot Anderson joined from Newcastle in a deal which helped the Magpies comply with PSR themselves, as well as Nikola Milenkovic, a defender with 60 caps for Serbia and over 250 appearances for Italian side Fiorentina aged just 27 for £12m. It was one of the bargains of the season, and those two became crucial members of the team; Milenkovic struck up an excellent partnership with Brazilian defender Murillo, who is earmarked as a star in the making, as Forest conceded just five fewer goals than champions Liverpool. Anderson added more energy and creativity to the midfield.

Forest are a huge club with a great history, but there is no getting away from the fact they’ve punched above their weight. When that happens, it can be difficult to maintain an upward trajectory. Playing in Europe will have an impact on the squad’s fitness levels, and balancing different expectations will make it tougher to build on such a high finish last season. When players impress, naturally those clubs with bigger budgets take notice, and it is difficult to keep a squad together. It is a tale as old as time; Elanga has already joined Newcastle for £52m and Forest are threatening legal action against Tottenham for what they deem an illegal approach for Gibbs-White despite a supposed £60m release clause in his contract.

Losing both of those players would be a huge blow to Nuno, whose system relies on them so heavily. Wood, now 33, needs to continue scoring goals too. It is also more difficult to play the same way without opponents working out how to beat you. Forest have been linked with a number of exciting players, including Aston Villa midfielder Jacob Ramsey, and Botafogo pair Jair Cunha, a defender and Igor Jesus have already signed. But there is pressure to deliver more to avoid a very difficult season this year, which many other clubs have failed to do.

All is far from lost, but the warning signs are already there. If Gibbs-White goes especially, there are gaping holes Nottingham Forest will need to fix.