Summer Transfer Window 2025

One of the reasons why many people were urging others to enjoy last season while it lasted. It's sadly predictable but when a provincial club over-achieves, it only takes one player to move on for it to wobble like a house of cards.

Gibbs-White is the jewel in the crown and for this 'Brighton' model to work, Forest clearly have to sell at as close to his peak value as possible. He's now getting called up to successive England squads and captains a side who finished seventh last year in the Premier League. Crucially, he also has just two years left on his contract and if he's not looking to sign a new one, Forest can't afford to allow him to run it down and leave for nothing.

A real shame but this is the market we're in now - fodder for the big boys. Trick is to maximise what they have to spend to extract your best players.

This is why the Premier League is so shit. With PSR the clubs playing catch up cannot... The best players get taken and the club left holding the bag have to try and replicate their successes with punts on talented players who haven't peaked yet. MGW wasn't signing a new deal. The club tried to open talks with him for a while now and his Reps just ignored them so obviously the club knew that this would be a difficult summer. This is why last season was our chance to really attract good players if we made the champions league and possibly keep the core here. This makes the Elanga thing even more baffling as he had three years left and Newcastle got him below market value. Cheaper than Joao Pedro.

I know football is cyclical but really only the ones with the money and the cheats (chelsea, Citeh) can prosper.

Last season offered real hope we could scare the big boys but this has us little Nottingham Forest crashing back to reality. I suspect the shit refereeing decisions will return to put us in our place (Not that I am cynical mind).

Always feared this would happen when we crapped out at the end of the season.

I am guessing the Monaco talent we were looking at (funny name) is the MGW replacement and Babayoko if we can get him is the Elanga replacement. It's football, I shouldn't care, but I do.

Blow it all up. Tricky is right. It's a scam.

Hopefully the new kit is nice (I suspect Stanley pinstripes) but look where that got us...

Chicago: Not surprised.

Of course the flip-side to that is it's one of the reasons why I was so gutted that we failed to make the Champions League. The opportunities to do that are very far and few between when as soon as you have a decent season your players get picked-off.

Brighton consistently selling their best players
Brentford look like losing Wissa, Mbuemo and Norgaard. Someone will trigger Eze at Palace, plus they will do well to keep Guehi and Wharton. Kudus has left West Ham

That’s our peer group.

As I said earlier, the fact that all these players get upcycled to the Big Six means that any semblance of competition is lost.

Not quite that simple, though, is it? Qualification for the Champions League, while an incredible achievement, would almost certainly have been a one-time gig.

Forest would have faced the big problem of all their players rightly wanting a significant pay rise, while every signing we targeted this summer would be infinitely more expensive in terms of transfer fee and wages. It would not have been sustainable - four and five-year contracts on a single season of CL football is a disaster waiting to happen.

If Gibbs-White wants to go, then sadly this is the window we have to sell him; with 2 years left on his deal he still has big value, but a year from now he (& potential suitors) would have us over a barrel. It all comes down to MGW himself, & this kind of thing is what many of us have been fearing from the moment Tuchel started with his “you need to move to a bigger club” shite.

There will be a fan meltdown (it’s already started), but if MGW won’t sign a new contract (& you can be bloody sure Forest will have asked), then the club actually have little choice. If the £60m release clause is true, that’s doubly rubbish from our perspective.

I hoped that we’d only need to sell one this Summer - & of course that might still be the case (though I don’t have a warm feeling).

We’re going to need some seriously good recruitment & some iron nerve from Nuno over the next few weeks & months.

For those who are saying this is the direct result of missing CL qualification by a point, I’m not sure I agree. Had we made the CL, our need for high quality investment would have been huge to have a remotely credible squad, & with UEFA’s tighter PSR rules, I don’t see how we could have found the dosh to do that without selling. Villa found exactly the same. It’s all academic anyway.

If MGW does go, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world, given good recruitment. Get a McAtee or a Harvey Elliott in at 10, beef up the wings & sign a top class midfield player and we can still be fine - & North of £110m from Elanga & MGW would give us the headroom to do that. But it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.

Plus it’s fucking Spurs. It would be.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

Fab Romano is giving it the here we go.

I think we do need to move relatively fast now. Letting Elanga and MGW go in a couple of days does leave us below the watermark (said mark being mid table security).

I’m surprised about the existence of this £60M release clause. It’s not so far above the fully-burdened fee we paid to Wolves and I also cannot believe it was too high for City?

Ornstein says we're back in for Wissa.

I’m already fed up with the happy clapper reception for Elanga and MGW next season as we get rolled over.

And yes, I’m bitter.

I’m steeling myself for the press hype about MGW; just watch him immediately become an automatic pick for England now he’s followed Tuchel’s advice & moved to a “big” club. The London press will claim it’s all because Frank has made him a better player….

As are Spurs apparently. You’d think he’s much more likely to go there.