The Nottingham Forest transfer deadline is now four days away, and for the first time this summer the Reds head into the final stretch with the hardest piece of business already done. Liam Delap arrived from Chelsea on Thursday for an initial £45m, the club-record fee that finally answered the striker question. What remains is smaller in profile but no less important — and, as of Friday afternoon, the decision on the biggest of those pieces is sitting on somebody else’s desk.
Forest have lodged a bid worth £22m for Crystal Palace right-back Daniel Munoz, and Palace are weighing it up. Oliver Glasner, meanwhile, has told supporters exactly what to expect before the window shuts at 11pm on Tuesday 1 September.
Nottingham Forest transfer deadline: what Glasner has said
The head coach was asked about the state of play at his pre-match press conference ahead of Saturday’s 12.30pm trip to Liverpool, and he did not hide behind the usual vagueness.
“As I mentioned, I think we will add two players. One we have added. That means I guess we will have at least one more signing,” Glasner said, speaking to reporters including Nottinghamshire Live. “Deals are quite close to being done. But now, from today on, my focus is on the Liverpool match.”
On Munoz specifically, he gave the answer every manager gives in deadline week: “No comments on any names. When the ink is dry, you will be informed.”
Two things are worth pulling out of that. The first is “at least” — Glasner has left the door open to more than one further arrival. The second is “quite close”, which is a long way from the noncommittal shrug he might have offered a week ago. Forest have been working on multiple fronts and, on the head coach’s own account, at least one of them is advanced.
The Munoz bid: what has actually been reported
When Forest’s interest in Munoz first surfaced on Thursday evening, the detail was thin: a £22m figure, and little else. That has now firmed up considerably.
According to The Athletic, as relayed by the Nottingham Post, the offer is structured as an initial £20m with a further £2m in potential add-ons. Palace are said to be “considering whether to accept”. Munoz has two years remaining on his contract at Selhurst Park.
That structure matters. An initial £20m for a 30-year-old with two years to run is a serious offer rather than an opening feeler, and the modest add-on element suggests Forest are not trying to disguise a lowball with clever accounting. It is a number designed to be taken seriously in the last week of a window.
The counterweight is age. Forest have spent the past two summers buying players in their early-to-mid twenties, and a 30-year-old full-back at that price does not obviously fit the recruitment pattern. What tilts it is the coach. Munoz was one of Glasner’s most trusted players at Palace, a wing-back who thrived in precisely the 3-4-2-1 shape the Austrian has brought to the City Ground, and there would be no adaptation period whatsoever — not to the league, not to the system, not to the manager.
Why right-back has become the priority
Look at the squad list and the gap is obvious. Neco Williams, Ola Aina and Nicolò Savona are the options on the right side of the defence, with Luca Netz the specialist on the left. Savona was among those reported to be carrying a knock in the build-up to the opening weekend, and Williams has been asked to cover an enormous amount of ground in a system that gives wing-backs the entire flank to patrol.
Depth in that position is not a luxury in Glasner’s football; it is a structural requirement. The 3-4-2-1 asks wing-backs to provide all of the team’s width in possession and to tuck in as auxiliary defenders out of it. Two players covering both flanks across a 38-game Premier League season, with European-standard fitness demands and no margin for a hamstring, is how good ideas come apart in February.
Forest have known this for weeks. They have already been knocked back elsewhere — Fiorentina rejected an approach for Dodo — and the Munoz bid represents a shift in approach: rather than hunting value in an unfamiliar market, go and buy the player the manager already knows can do the job on day one.
There is a neat logic on Palace’s side too. As the Nottingham Post notes, the Eagles have already strengthened in the Colombian’s position, which removes the usual objection that a selling club would be left scrambling for a replacement with four days to go. That is the single biggest reason this deal is live rather than fanciful.
The midfield question that has not gone away
Glasner said two signings, and only if you count Delap as one of them does “at least one more” mean a right-back alone. The other thread that has run through August is midfield — and there is a nine-figure hole to explain why.
Elliot Anderson’s roughly £116m sale to Manchester City took Forest’s most progressive ball-carrier out of the side in a single afternoon. What is left is a functional but numerically thin group: Ryan Yates, Nicolás Domínguez, Xaver Schlager, Ibrahim Sangaré and James McAtee, with Morgan Gibbs-White operating further forward as one of the two No 10s.
Sangaré will miss the Liverpool game with a minor calf problem picked up in training, which drops that number to four senior central midfielders for a lunchtime kick-off at Anfield. It is a small, unglamorous illustration of the argument for signing another.
Talks with Corinthians over Andre have been reported, and that link has not gone away. Whether it clears before Tuesday is a different matter — South American deals in the final week of a European window are notoriously prone to collapse over payment structures and registration timing.
What the window looks like as a whole
Four in, and a significant number out. Xaver Schlager arrived on a free from RB Leipzig, Ousmane Diomande for a reported £34.3m from Sporting CP, Steven Benda on a free from Fulham, and now Delap for £45m from Chelsea. That is a coherent set of additions: a runner for the double pivot, a centre-back comfortable defending big spaces, a third senior goalkeeper, and a striker with the pace to attack the ground behind a high line.
The exits have been just as consequential. Beyond Anderson, Taiwo Awoniyi joined Coventry City for £9m, David Carmo and Jota Silva both moved to Olympiacos, Omar Richards signed for Aris, and Willy Boly, Angus Gunn and Stefan Ortega were released. Dilane Bakwa (Lille) and Eric da Silva Moreira (Excelsior) have gone out on loan. This has not been a squad topped up at the edges; it has been substantially rebuilt around a coach who arrived in July.
Which is the honest context for the opening fortnight. Forest sit 15th after a 1-0 home defeat to Leeds United on the opening weekend, followed by a 2-0 loss to the same opponent in the Carabao Cup second round three days later. Two games is not a verdict on anything, but it does explain the urgency around getting the last two or three pieces in before Tuesday rather than in January.
What happens next
The immediate answer is Anfield, where Glasner says his attention now sits. Gibbs-White and Yates are both available after their respective knocks, which at least gives the head coach his creative heartbeat and his captain for a fixture that will tell him plenty.
Behind that, the clock. Palace have a decision to make on £22m, Forest have a midfielder to chase, and the head coach has publicly set the expectation at one more signing minimum. If Munoz arrives, Glasner gets a wing-back who already knows the choreography. If Palace say no, Forest will have spent the bulk of the closing week on a target they cannot control — and the contingency list gets very short, very quickly.
Follow every development before the 11pm Tuesday cut-off across our Nottingham Forest coverage, and read Glasner’s full transfer update in his own words.
