Oliver Glasner has insisted the Nottingham Forest transfer plan will not be rewritten by one bad afternoon. Speaking to BBC Radio Nottingham on Monday, two days after Anton Stach’s late free-kick handed Leeds United a 1-0 win at the City Ground, the Forest head coach said the opening-day defeat “doesn’t affect our strategic planning” — a pointed message to anyone hoping the Reds would spend their way out of a slow start before deadline day.
Here’s what this piece covers:
- What Glasner actually said about Forest’s transfer strategy after the Leeds defeat
- Why the plan was always two targeted additions rather than a scattergun spree
- Where the reported targets in the beat — Marc Casado among them — would fit
- The honest case for pushing harder before the window shuts
- What Tuesday’s Carabao Cup rematch with Leeds will reveal about the squad’s real depth
Background: a summer of big money, spent deliberately
To understand why Glasner is refusing to blink, you have to look at how this window has actually been run. Forest banked the biggest cheque in the club’s history on 2 July, selling Elliot Anderson to Manchester City for £116m. That is transformational money for a club that finished 16th in 2025-26 and burned through four head coaches doing it — Nuno Espírito Santo, Ange Postecoglou, Sean Dyche and Vítor Pereira all came and went inside a single, chaotic campaign.
What followed was not a spending spree. Glasner arrived from Crystal Palace in early July, and the recruitment since has been narrow and specific: Xaver Schlager on a free from RB Leipzig on 23 July, Ousmane Diomande from Sporting for £34.3m on 11 August as the marquee addition, and goalkeeper Steven Benda on a free from Fulham on 15 August. Set against that, the outgoings have been substantial — Taiwo Awoniyi to Coventry City, David Carmo and Stefan Ortega to Olympiacos, Willy Boly released, Angus Gunn to San Jose, Jota Silva out on loan, and the expired loans of Douglas Luiz, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Lorenzo Lucca all gone.
Three in, a small crowd out, and £116m sitting on the other side of the ledger. It is a squad that has been thinned deliberately and rebuilt slowly, with no European football to service this season and, in Marinakis-era terms, unusual restraint at the top of the market.
The core: what “strategic planning” actually means
One quote, one very clear message
The BBC Radio Nottingham clip runs to seven minutes and is titled, simply, “Glasner: ‘It doesn’t affect our strategic planning'”. The broadcaster’s own summary is blunt: the Forest boss says the opening-day defeat doesn’t change their transfer plans. The Nottingham Post, reporting on the same Monday media duties, framed it as Glasner ruling out a specific deadline-day scenario altogether.
That is a manager drawing a line. Losing at home on day one to a well-drilled Leeds side is a bad result, not a diagnosis. The manner of the goal — a set-piece, in the closing minutes, from a specialist striker of dead balls — points to a game decided by a moment rather than a structural failing. Glasner appears to have read it the same way, and he is refusing to let 90 minutes redraw a plan built over two months.
Two more signings, not five
Crucially, “unchanged” does not mean “finished”. The BBC reported on Monday that Glasner is still targeting two new signings before the window closes, which is consistent with what he has said publicly since the Diomande deal landed. We looked at exactly what those two additions need to be after the Leeds defeat, and the shape of the squad makes the priorities fairly obvious.
The midfield is the pressure point. Anderson’s departure removed the engine of last season’s team, and while Schlager is a genuinely clever free transfer and James McAtee offers something different, the rotation behind Morgan Gibbs-White, Ryan Yates, Ibrahim Sangaré and Nicolás Domínguez is thinner than a Premier League season demands. The forward line is the second question: with Awoniyi gone, Chris Wood is 34 and the goals are spread across Arnaud Kalimuendo, Igor Jesus, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Dan Ndoye and Omari Hutchinson rather than concentrated in one reliable centre-forward.
Where the reported targets would fit
The transfer beat around the City Ground has been noisy this week, and it is worth separating the reporting from the fact. Multiple outlets, including the Nottingham Post, have linked Forest with Barcelona midfielder Marc Casado in a deal reported at around £25m, with EPL Index describing the Reds as favourites — though at least one aggregator has pointed out that Glasner’s own recent comments cut against that profile of signing. Football Italia, meanwhile, reports that Milan are waiting on offers from Forest and Aston Villa for two unwanted players. None of this is confirmed, and none of it should be read as done.
What the links do have in common is that they are midfield-first. That is the tell. If Forest’s two remaining moves land in central midfield and up front, the window closes as a coherent piece of work rather than a reaction to a Saturday afternoon.
The counter-argument: the squad looked short, not just unlucky
There is a fair rebuttal, and Forest supporters were making it before full time on Saturday. One game is a small sample, but it was a game in which the Reds could not find a way through a well-organised opponent at home, and the bench did not look like it contained the answer. When you have sold a £116m midfielder and replaced him with a free transfer and a centre-back, the raw arithmetic invites scepticism.
The immediate test arrives quickly. Forest host Leeds again at the City Ground on Tuesday in the Carabao Cup second round, and the injury news is not helpful: the Nottingham Post, Yahoo Sport and Hayters all report that captain Gibbs-White will miss the tie after Glasner flagged a fresh concern in his Monday press conference. Diomande, meanwhile, was an unused presence as Stach’s free-kick settled Saturday’s opener. A rotated side without the captain, against opponents who have just beaten you, is exactly the fixture that exposes a squad’s second layer.
Glasner’s answer to all of this is that a plan you abandon under mild pressure was never a plan. That is defensible. It is also the kind of position that gets tested in public every 72 hours.
Nottingham Forest transfer plan: what to watch before deadline day
Between now and the close of the window, three things are worth tracking.
- Midfield first. If Forest sign only one player, expect it to be a central midfielder. Every credible link this week points there, and it is the position the Anderson sale hollowed out.
- The striker question may go unanswered. Forest have already signalled that a forward is not the priority. If Wood, Kalimuendo and Igor Jesus are the plan, the November fixture pile-up will tell us whether that was conviction or thrift.
- Outgoings still to come. Dilane Bakwa has been linked with a loan move, and any squad player leaving late changes the depth calculation on the way in as well as out.
The bigger picture is that Glasner has been given something none of his four predecessors had: a clean slate, no European commitments, and a war chest already partly converted into first-team quality. He is entitled to spend the rest of it on his own terms. The risk is that patience in late August is indistinguishable from inertia if the results do not turn.
The verdict
The Nottingham Forest transfer plan is intact, publicly and — on the evidence of Glasner’s own words — genuinely. Two more signings are still on the list, the midfield is the obvious priority, and one home defeat has not moved the target. Whether that discipline reads as calm or as complacency will depend almost entirely on what happens against Leeds on Tuesday and where the Reds sit when the window slams shut. For now, the Tricky Trees have a manager who knows what he wants. The next week decides whether he gets it.
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