Nottingham Forest have been the butt of the joke since joining the Premier League when it comes to signings, but their critics have only found the punchline, not the point this summer
Nottingham Forest and transfer deadline day revived the same videos and social media memes a year on from the summer spree which drew derision from football fans and media outlets – we’re looking at you talkSPORT.
There was the Royal Rumble one with too many wrestlers in the ring as new signings. Or one with Steve Cooper getting increasingly annoyed and confused by another arrival. Never ones to miss out, Paddy Power tweeted a Big Brother eviction ‘shall we have another one’ video and posted a photo of an exhausted Ben Affleck with the caption ‘Forest’s club photographer every deadline day’. Ritchie Sumpter is a hard working man to be fair.
Yes, Forest were busy and yes, it is fun to laugh at them if you don’t support them. The same goes if you don’t understand what was really going on at the City Ground this summer.
Forest signed seven players on transfer deadline day and 13 in total, but 30 players have left since the end of last season. That gave them a net spend of around £50m, less than Bournemouth and Burnley and in the same bracket as Aston Villa and Brentford.
A year ago there was an element of chaos. Two windows were basically packed into one to build a squad to compete in the Premier League.
Maybe it went too far, but this is how Forest have done business since before Evangelos Marinakis bought the club. Not every signing came off because they were never going to, but the ratio of success vs failure was solid.
Injuries in January led to risky but necessary signings to try to stave off relegation. Felipe and Danilo worked, Chris Wood is starting to, while Jonjo Shelvey definitely didn’t.
Come this summer, fans cried out for quality over quantity and that is basically what they got. It is hard to look at any of the summer signings so far and say they look a dud.
It was a shame to sell Brennan Johnson over Shelvey and other unwanted players, but his status as an academy graduate was an FFP dream and the money has been invested well by Ross Wilson and George Syrianos.
Ibrahim Sangare is the headline signing but others make sense in the present and future, including Argentina international Nicolas Dominguez and Andrew Omobamidele, a ball playing centre-half who joined from Norwich City for £11m.
“I’m told by people who would know in Phil Jagielka and Joleon Lescott that Andrew Omobamidele was the best centre back not playing the in the Premier League so that’s a real encouraging sign,” Forest fan and TNT Sports commentator Darren Fletcher said on this week’s Garibaldi Red podcast. “The one I’ve heard tremendous reports about is Nico Dominguez, the Argentine. I was speaking to Don Hutchison on Friday. He covers Serie A on TNT Sports a lot.
“He said Dominguez was known as the king of the press in Italy. If you can bring that energy with an elite player in Sangare added to the mix we have, that becomes a key area. If they are going to change the style of play it comes through central midfield.
“You have to be strong there. They’ve addressed that. They’ve got significant numbers at centre-back. They’ve got players who are slightly fragile in that area. Boly, Niakhate and Felipe fall into that category so you need that.
“I also love that it’s the second season in the Premier League and they’ve now got three centre forwards. You’ve got all bases covered. I think they’ve built the squad brilliantly this summer.”
