Javi Rueda is the name Nottingham Forest have moved for to finish their summer. The Reds are in talks with Celta Vigo over a €15m (£12.8m) deal for the right-back, as reported by the Guardian’s Will Unwin and Jacob Steinberg on Wednesday, and it would probably be the club’s final incoming of a window that has already produced a club-record striker signing.
Here is what this piece covers:
- Who Javi Rueda is, and exactly what has been reported so far
- Why Oliver Glasner has spent the window hunting a right wing-back specifically
- How the deal fits alongside the £50m Liam Delap agreement
- The counter-argument — Forest already look stacked on that side
- What is left to happen before the deadline on Tuesday
What has actually been reported about the Javi Rueda deal
Start with the verified detail, because there is more of it here than in most late-window links. The fee under discussion is €15m, which the Guardian puts at £12.8m. Rueda is 24. He is a former Real Madrid academy player and a former Spain youth international, and he joined Celta three years ago from Madrid — who, per the same report, are due half of whatever fee Celta eventually bank.
Last season was his breakthrough. He played 26 La Liga games and a further 11 in the Europa League, helping Celta reach the quarter-finals of that competition. That is a genuinely useful profile for a fringe-to-first-team jump: a full season of top-flight Spanish minutes plus European knockout football, at an age where the next contract is the one that defines a career.
What has not been reported is just as important. There is no agreed fee, no medical, no contract length and no confirmation from either club. Talks are talks, and a €15m right-back is exactly the kind of deal that can sit dormant for four days and then complete in an hour on deadline day. Treat it as a live negotiation, not a signing.
Why Glasner has been hunting a right wing-back
This is the part that makes the link credible rather than random. The Guardian’s line is that Glasner has been seeking someone who can play right wing-back, and that the 24-year-old fits the desired profile. Anyone who has watched Forest’s opening fortnight will recognise the need.
The shape demands it
Glasner’s football has leaned heavily on a back three with two aggressive, high-volume wing-backs — players who defend as a five and attack as a front five, and who cover more ground than anyone else on the pitch. We looked at how that 3-4-2-1 is likely to work at the City Ground before a ball had been kicked. The system does not have a right-back in the conventional sense. It has a right-sided runner with a lung capacity problem, and that is a specialist job rather than a position you can fill by asking a full-back to push on.
Six weeks in, and the manager is not pretending
Forest have lost twice in four days to Leeds United, the second of them a 2-0 EFL Cup exit at the City Ground on Tuesday night. Speaking afterwards, Glasner told reporters: “Right now, we are far away from where we want to be. The fact is that this team had a relegation battle for nine months.”
He went further, and it is worth quoting at length because it explains the shape of this window: “But then maybe your best midfielder leaves the club and now we expect we compete for European places because Oliver Glasner is in. Sorry, this is what I can’t deliver within six weeks. I’m no magician, no messiah, just hard work. That is what we have to do.”
A manager talking like that in the final week of a window is a manager who has told his recruitment department exactly which shirts he needs filled. Rueda is one of them.
How Rueda fits with the £50m Delap deal
The Reds’ summer has been shaped by one enormous piece of business at each end. Elliot Anderson went to Manchester City for £116m on 2 July, a club-record sale, and the money has been going back out ever since: Xaver Schlager on a free from RB Leipzig, Ousmane Diomande from Sporting for £34.3m, Steven Benda from Fulham, and now a club-record fee for a striker. Chelsea have agreed to sell Liam Delap in a deal worth £50m, and he was set for his medical earlier on Wednesday.
Rueda, in that context, is the tidy-up rather than the statement. Around £13m for a 24-year-old with a season of La Liga and European football behind him is the kind of number a club spends when it has identified a structural gap and wants it closed before the season gets away from it. It is also, tellingly, the sort of fee that suggests Forest see him as a starter-or-nothing signing rather than a marquee one.
The outgoing traffic points the same way. Forest confirmed on Wednesday that Eric da Silva Moreira has joined Dutch side Excelsior on loan — a right-sided squad player leaving on the same day the club opened talks for a right wing-back. Dilane Bakwa has gone to Lille on loan. Jota Silva is at Olympiacos. This is a squad being narrowed and sharpened at the same time.
The counter-argument: do Forest really need another right-sided defender?
Here is the case against, and it is not weak. Look at the squad list and Forest’s right flank is the most populated part of it. Neco Williams wears the No 3 and has been a first-choice right-back through several regimes. Ola Aina is the No 34. Nicolò Savona is the No 37. Diomande, the most expensive defender the club has bought this summer, can play on that side of a three. Adding a fourth or fifth option there, in a season with no European football to distribute minutes into, invites the obvious question of who exactly is going to play.
There is a plausible answer, and it is uncomfortable. The London Evening Standard reported on Wednesday that Forest have set a clear stance on Neco Williams amid Tottenham’s interest, and our own running account of the Williams situation is here. Forest’s public position has been that he is not for sale. But clubs do not usually open talks for a €15m right-sided specialist in the last week of a window without a contingency in mind, and supporters are entitled to read the timing that way until the deadline passes and Williams is still here.
The other caveat is the simplest one. Rueda has had exactly one season as a regular in a good league. He is not a proven Premier League quantity, and the step up from La Liga to a Forest side that finished 16th and has started this season with two defeats to Leeds is not a gentle one. Buying potential in the final week of a window is how clubs end up with a player who needs six months to settle in a team that needs points in October.
What happens next
The window shuts on Tuesday 1 September. On the evidence of Wednesday, three things are in motion at once:
- Delap over the line. A fee is agreed and the medical was in hand; Forest will want him registered before the trip to Anfield if they possibly can.
- Rueda, or someone like him. Talks with Celta are open, Madrid’s cut of the fee is a complication for the selling club rather than the buying one, and the Guardian’s framing is that this would be the last man in. If it collapses, expect an alternative in the same profile rather than no signing at all.
- Midfield, still. Glasner has spoken publicly about wanting two or three more additions, and the Anderson-shaped hole has not been filled by Schlager alone. Our deadline-day plan is being updated as the week develops.
The bottom line
A €15m Spanish right-back will not be the headline of Forest’s summer — that belongs to a £116m sale and a £50m striker. But Javi Rueda tells you more about how Glasner intends to play than either of them. A back three needs two specialists in the wing-back roles, Forest have plenty of right-backs and not obviously a right wing-back, and the manager has spent his first six weeks saying out loud that this squad is not yet built for what he wants. Six days to go, and the Tricky Trees are still shopping for the right shape rather than the biggest name.
Follow every Reds move before the deadline with our Nottingham Forest transfer coverage.
