Forest sold Elliot Anderson for £116m. Recent sellers all signed a replacement.
Nottingham Forest sold Elliot Anderson to Manchester City for £116m in July. Head coach Oliver Glasner wants more signings before Tuesday's deadline.
What happened
Nottingham Forest head coach Oliver Glasner said he has already identified further signings he wants completed before the transfer window closes.
Manchester City signed Elliot Anderson from Forest for £116m. The deal, announced on , made the midfielder the most expensive British player. Among this summer’s Premier League deals, only Chelsea’s £117m purchase of Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa is bigger.
Forest also start the season with a new head coach. Oliver Glasner is one of a record nine Premier League managers taking charge of a first league game for their club this month. On Sunday he said he has already picked out more players he wants.
Much of the money is already spent. Xaver Schlager came from RB Leipzig on a free transfer in July. Ousmane Diomande came from Sporting for £34.3m on , and Liam Delap joined from Chelsea on in a club-record deal worth up to £50m. On Monday Daniel Munoz completed a move from Crystal Palace worth up to £22m.
The window closes at 23:00 BST on Tuesday . It opened on . Forest have bought many players quickly before: 21 signings in the summer of 2022, and 30 in the year after promotion.
Sources: Sky Sports (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), ESPN (2), Premier League
The Pattern
All four clubs signed a replacement in time. We looked for Premier League clubs since 2023 that sold a regular starter for a fee in the summer, with at least two weeks of the window left. We checked whether they signed a first-team player for the same position before that window closed. We left out January windows and sales on the last day. Four clubs fit, and all four are below.
Show the other 2 cases
The Read
History and the club both point to more signings. Forest have lost their most valuable midfielder, and their new head coach has said on camera that he has targets. Forest’s recent record of buying many players fast is the busiest in the league, and if the Anderson money is not spent by Tuesday night, it cannot be used for four months. In all four earlier cases the selling club signed a replacement, including two clubs that had just sold for record fees.
The case against is price and time. A club that still has the Anderson money on pays the highest prices, and its position gets weaker every hour. Forest have also already done the replacing: Schlager arrived in July for the midfield, then Diomande and Delap in August and Munoz on Monday. The most likely way this goes wrong is a quiet Tuesday, with one player going out on loan and a statement about patience.
The record is also small. Four cases show the direction clearly, but they are too few to show how strong it is. What Forest do before 23:00 BST on Tuesday settles the rest.
Disclaimer
Hunch works only from sources that are publicly available, and publishes on the basis of analysis of that material. We do not form an editorial opinion or take sides, we give a simpler and wider view of news that already exists. If information in a source we used was inaccurate, distorted, or later disputed but had already entered our analysis, Hunch accepts no liability for that. Predictions are not advice. Phase 1 markets use Hunch Points, not money.
Published by Hunch under the Editorial Code. Complaints and corrections: /contact/.