Summer Transfer Window 2025

From Percy:

Anthony Elanga deal to #nufc agreed at £55m + around £5m in extras: a club record sale for #nffc for the 2nd time in 2 years. Forest reluctant to sell Elanga, who did not push to move, but overall package & profit (signed for £13.5m) regarded as too good to turn down . At least two wingers to be targeted this summer

Percy saying £5m in add ons too which makes it better.

Elanga didn’t push for move either.

I think that is way too low. If Elanga wasn't pushing for the move I think it's a bit mental especially with 3 years left on his contract. Kudus at West Ham was valued at 50 and turned down. Semenyo 70.

Antony had better stats than all of them.

I hate this deal. Let's hope we get someone sexy in.

Chicago: Having a bit of a sulk.

Athletic says £52m plus bonus

Even worse then. What a pile of Dogshit.

We weren’t even under pressure to sell. I
Would have held the Geordies to the fire.
EDU out!!!

Chicago: Staring at the ceiling.

Geordie journos will say low, Forest journos will say high, & we’ll never know the exact numbers. But if the club are essentially saying the money is too good to turn down, I trust them; they know the ins & outs of our finances (& of likely targets) way better than a bunch of Webmongs plucking figures out of the air & saying “feels low / feels high”.

“Too good to turn down” feels closer to Percy than the Athletic’s Waugh (who has form on this) but as I say we’ll never really know.

The precise fee received matters far less than how well we spend it. £50m+ (even with a sell-on) is probably 3 players in the market we shop in at present. If 2 of them come off - or even if one of them bigly comes off - then it’s good business for Forest; if they’re all flops, it isn’t. Far too early to tell at present (not that this will stop people, obvs)

“The Brighton Model” does not mean that you only sell fringe players.

But that’s the point; after one successful season where we fell agonisingly short of the big money competition (though that would have itself caused issues with the amount we’d need to spend), we’re not (yet) in a world where we can afford to buy (or retain, indefinitely) “proven ‘ship level players”. Elanga wasn’t one when we signed him, nor was MGW, nor Anderson, nor Murillo, nor Neco, nor even Aina. Even CHO was a big gamble, not in quality but in fitness.

That’s the model we & other clubs like us are forced to adopt by the PSR rules; buy relatively cheap, develop, sell relatively expensive, use the money well, rinse & repeat. “Relatively cheap” does not equal “proven ‘Ship players”.

I don’t like it any more than anyone else, but that’s the reality of where we are. The alternative would likely be a forced PSR sale before 30 Jun 26 in a market where buying clubs know we have to sell so can low-ball for a Gibbs-White or a Murillo.

I am very sad to see Elanga go, but personally I’d say the performance of the recruitment team over the past 3+ windows means we should cut them some slack.

And fans will find a way to believe the one they like best? Sorry, I'm not saying you're wrong but these two sentences made me chuckle.

Beyond all that though, 3 seasons ago we were turning over a total of £25M and we are now selling a single player for over £50M and it isn't one of the two we thought it would be. I hate a lot of the PL stuff but that shows we did something right over the last three years.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to blame PSR, either. I believe our annual trading loss is in the region of £70m - that’s not a reasonable amount to expect an owner to keep putting in indefinitely, we have to make an occasional big sale, probably one a year, to make the numbers work.

£70m is about 1.5% of Marinakis' growing wealth. I doubt he's bothered how much his favourite (sorry Olympiakos) hobby costs him. I fully expect he'd be happy to be putting in three times as much.

1.5% of his wealth every year? 15% over a decade? And a new stand on top?

Sorta depends on whether he wants that money for anything else though, right? All the needs of him and his family are safely met for generations. It’s not like you or I pissing chunks of our wealth away on a vanity project.

That’s not to say he’a likely to be fine with it.. just that it wouldn’t be particularly weird or irrational if he was.

If I never had to worry about money, I’d be happy enough to spunk 15% of my surplus on things to make me happy and not fret too much about my line going down.

Good Commie economics there. Whilst I can't imagine he goes without most of his trillions are probably tied up in assets creating the sports club cash.

It’s not a PSR sale in the Elliot Anderson / Douglas Luiz stylee - “shit, if we don’t sell this bloke by 30 Jun then we’re in points deduction land”. But it is a PSR sale in that owners aren’t allowed to just stuff more of their own money in (unless they’re Chelsea) & the club must balance the books (within the bonkers definition of “balance” that constitutes PL rules). Had we sold no-one major, the “shit, if we don’t sell…” scenario would have been pretty likely next Summer.

I entirely agree with Tricky’s thing about knowing value - but as fans we never will; we have no idea whatsoever about contract clauses, the reality of negotiations, what our books actually look like, or the player’s (agent’s) wishes.

In the end this is a simple equation, albeit from our position of almost zero knowledge of the true numbers:

1. Most of us would agree that last season’s top 14-ish players were a match for most, but thereafter the drop-off was too steep to sustain.
2. Therefore the aim this Summer was probably to keep as much of the band together as was possible, buuurt…
3. Adding quality in depth, esp for Yurp but also to mitigate vs the fatigued final few games.
4. You’re not going to fund point 3 with an O’Brien here and a Turner there; we somehow achieved that 12 months ago, but the chances of doing it again were always slim-to-none.
5. So when someone with deeper pockets than you approaches you for a player, you extract maximum value (realistic value - not the fan “not a penny less than £100m” bollocks). I was afraid it was going to be MGW when Citeh were sniffing around, but it’s proved to be Elanga instead.

I’m sorry to see him go, but I’d rather it were him than MGW or Murillo. Others will disagree, no doubt