The Nottingham Forest Andre transfer is over, and for the first time we know roughly how it died. Corinthians executive Marcelo Paz has given a timeline of the Reds’ approach for the 20-year-old midfielder that ends not with a rejection or a bidding war, but with silence – a counter offer sent to the City Ground on a Saturday night in late August that, he says, was never answered. With the window shut since 11pm on Tuesday 1 September, Forest go into the season with the midfield they have, and the Andre file goes into the drawer marked January.
What Corinthians say happened
Speaking to Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte, Paz laid out the sequence with the precision of a man who had the messages in front of him. Forest’s offer, he says, arrived through Andre’s agent rather than club-to-club, and it was a flat fee with nothing attached.
“On Saturday, August 22nd, we received an offer via Diogo (Andre’s agent, Diogo Silva) from Nottingham Forest for 12 million euros directly, with no bonuses, nothing,” Paz said. “We received this offer at exactly 8.28pm (Brazil time). At 9.54pm, Corinthians presented their counter offer. After that, nothing else came.”
Eighty-six minutes from bid to counter-bid, then nothing for ten days until the window closed. Paz did not disclose what the counter offer was worth, which is the one number that would tell you whether this was a negotiation Forest chose to abandon or one that was priced out of reach in a single reply. Roughly €12m converts to about £10m – a modest outlay by the standards of a summer in which the Reds spent a reported £101m.
It is worth being clear about what is claim and what is fact here. This is Corinthians’ account of a private negotiation, relayed through a Brazilian newspaper, and Forest have not commented publicly on it. As the Nottingham Post reported on Thursday morning, the version on the record is the selling club’s.
The agent’s version is rather less polite
Paz was, in fact, responding to criticism. Diogo Silva, who represents Andre, had already used the same publication to accuse Corinthians of mishandling every piece of interest in his client this summer – including an earlier bid from AC Milan reported at €17m (around £14.7m), which would have been comfortably the best offer on the table.
“There was a misjudgment in Milan’s offer, and it will happen more often as long as there aren’t people capable of understanding how the European market works,” Silva said. “Corinthians can’t refuse a €17 million deal and then not receive any offers even similar to that one. I think there’s a lack of expertise in understanding how the European market works. People don’t know how much a player is really worth.”
Globo Esporte report that Silva was equally unimpressed by the club’s handling of the approaches from Forest and from Olympiacos – who, as Reds supporters know, sit alongside Forest in Evangelos Marinakis’s portfolio and were reported to have tried a €10m (£8.7m) offer of their own. The agent’s view, per the publication, was that Corinthians’ asking price sat “far from what the English and Greek clubs were offering”, and that the counter proposals were pitched deliberately high to avoid a sale altogether.
If that reading is right, Forest’s silence looks less like negligence and more like a club recognising a closed door when it sees one. There is no point spending deadline week chasing a valuation designed not to be met.
Why Forest were in for a Corinthians midfielder at all
Because of a hole the size of £116m. Elliot Anderson’s sale to Manchester City in early July was superb business in accounting terms and a genuine problem in footballing ones: Forest lost their most complete central midfielder, the player who carried the ball out of defence and set the tempo, and did so before Oliver Glasner had taken a single training session.
The recruitment that followed was sensible rather than spectacular. Xaver Schlager arrived from RB Leipzig on a free transfer, an experienced, aggressive, high-pressing eight who fits Glasner’s system almost too neatly. But one free transfer does not replace a nine-figure sale, and the club knew it. Our look at the fresh talks Forest opened for Andre in late August came at exactly the point the club had accepted a second midfielder was needed.
Andre was the archetype of the Marinakis-era Forest target: 20 years old, playing regularly in a demanding league, a resale asset as much as an immediate solution, and available at a fee that would not have troubled the accounts. The interest from Milan tells you other people rated him too.
Where it leaves Glasner’s midfield
Thinner than the head coach would like, but far from bare. Forest go into the autumn with Ibrahim Sangaré, Nicolás Domínguez, Schlager, captain Ryan Yates and James McAtee as central options, with Morgan Gibbs-White operating ahead of them as the creative pivot in Glasner’s 3-4-2-1.
The immediate complication is fitness. Gibbs-White has been managing a knee problem – he missed the Carabao Cup exit to Leeds United on 25 August – and there have been knocks around Yates and others through the past fortnight. Lose two of that group at once and Forest are picking a Premier League midfield with no room for error, which is precisely the scenario a £10m 20-year-old was meant to insure against.
Nor was Andre the only midfield-adjacent target to get away. Two bids for Newcastle winger Jacob Murphy, at £10m and then £15m, were rejected. A reported £40m move for Everton’s Harrison Armstrong reached an advanced stage and then collapsed, with the teenager staying at Goodison. Deadline day itself brought no arrivals at all, only departures – Morato to West Ham, Zach Abbott to Southampton and Omari Hutchinson to AC Milan, all on season-long loans. The full ledger is in our summer 2026 ins and outs.
The case for Forest’s restraint
There is one, and it is stronger than the mood of the last week suggests. Forest did spend – a reported £50m club record on Liam Delap from Chelsea, roughly £34m on Ousmane Diomande from Sporting CP, about £22m on Daniel Muñoz following Glasner from Crystal Palace, plus Schlager and Steven Benda on frees. Five first-team signings and around £101m committed is not a club sitting on its hands.
They also did their business early, which is the part that gets no credit until February. Delap was in the building by 27 August and made his debut at Anfield two days later. Muñoz signed on 31 August rather than at four minutes to eleven the following night. Set against rivals who spent deadline day in a panic, Forest’s window was orderly.
And the players they kept matter as much as the ones they bought. Gibbs-White, Murillo and Neco Williams all stayed despite the usual speculation. Keeping the spine of a side that finished seventh has value that does not show up on a spreadsheet of incomings.
Was it a mistake?
Honestly, it depends on a number nobody outside the two clubs has seen. If Corinthians’ counter offer was €15m with achievable bonuses, walking away from a 20-year-old of that profile looks like false economy from a club that had just banked £116m. If it was €25m and rising, Forest were right to stop reading.
What is harder to defend is the manner of it, at least as Corinthians tell it – a bid submitted through an intermediary, a reply inside ninety minutes, and then ten days of nothing while the window ran down. Deals die in that silence. Forest have historically been among the most active and communicative operators in the market, so if the Brazilian account is accurate, it is out of character rather than typical.
What happens now
Nothing, until January. The window closed at 11pm on 1 September and the next opportunity to sign anyone is the winter market, which is where Andre’s name will surely reappear – Corinthians will still want to sell a player whose agent is briefing openly against them, and Forest will still have a midfield one injury from being stretched. We have set out what Glasner still needs in January in full.
The more pressing business is on the pitch. Forest are still without a win in 2026/27 after losing at home to Leeds, going out of the Carabao Cup to the same opponents and then drawing 2-2 at Liverpool on 29 August, a performance that looked much more like the side supporters recognise. Tottenham Hotspur come to the City Ground at 3pm on Saturday 6 September, and if that midfield stands up to Spurs, the Andre file will feel a good deal less urgent than it does this morning.
Either way, the Reds have their answer on one question: the summer’s last piece of midfield business was never really theirs to complete. Confirmed team news, as always, comes from the official Nottingham Forest website.
