The Nottingham Forest centre-backs question is the one loose thread left hanging by an otherwise tidy summer. Five senior signings, a reported £101m committed, business done early rather than at four minutes to eleven – and then, in the last hours before the window shut at 11pm on Tuesday 1 September, two central defenders walked out of the door on loan. Oliver Glasner now goes into 16 Premier League games before the January window with a back three built on three first-choice names and very little behind them.
How Forest got here
The incomings were sensible. Xaver Schlager arrived from RB Leipzig on a free, Ousmane Diomande cost a reported £34m from Sporting CP, Steven Benda came in as back-up goalkeeper, Liam Delap smashed the club record at a reported £50m from Chelsea and Daniel Muñoz followed Glasner from Crystal Palace for a reported £22m. A sixth, Gustavo Sa, signed and was immediately loaned to sister club Olympiacos. The full ledger is in our summer 2026 ins and outs.
Diomande was the centrepiece of it defensively – a young defender with the pace and front-foot aggression to play the left or centre of a three, and a player Glasner had reportedly admired for some time. Sign him and, on paper, Forest had upgraded a defence that finished seventh in 2024/25 with Nikola Milenković and Murillo as its spine.
Then came deadline day, and it went one way only. Morato joined West Ham United on a season-long loan with an option to buy. Zach Abbott signed a new Forest deal to 2030 and went to Southampton for the season. Both remain Forest players on paper. Neither can be picked for Forest until next summer.
The Nottingham Forest centre-backs depth chart
Glasner’s preferred shape is the 3-4-2-1 he has used since arriving on 6 July – the system we broke down in our look at his formation before the Leeds opener. It needs three central defenders every week, plus cover. The names available are Milenković, Murillo, Diomande and Jair Cunha, with Tyler Bindon also on the squad list having been the subject of loan interest through August.
The Nottingham Post’s assessment on Thursday was blunter still: with Abbott and Morato gone, Cunha is the only other natural centre-back Glasner can call on. That is four players for three shirts across a Premier League season, in a position where one hamstring and one suspension can arrive in the same week.
Put it another way. If Milenković picks up a knock on a Saturday and Murillo collects a second yellow, Forest’s back three for the following weekend picks itself – because there is nobody left to choose between.
Jair Cunha: the promotion nobody planned for
The Brazilian is the biggest beneficiary of the last fortnight. Cunha had already moved ahead of Morato in the pecking order before the deadline, which is part of the reason the club were comfortable letting Morato go to London, and with Diomande still adjusting to English football he now stands as the first name Glasner turns to when the back three needs changing.
That is a lot of weight for a young defender in his first serious run in the Premier League, but it is not an unreasonable bet. Forest have made a habit of it – Murillo arrived as a 21-year-old nobody in England had watched and became the best defender at the club within a season. Cunha is tall, left-sided and comfortable stepping into midfield with the ball, which is exactly the profile Glasner’s system asks of the men either side of his central defender.
The caveat is minutes. Cunha has not yet played a full Premier League season, and the difference between being fourth choice who plays ten games and third choice who plays thirty is enormous. Forest are about to find out which he is.
The improvised options
Glasner does have solutions short of signing anybody, because several of his defenders are capable in more than one position.
Ola Aina has played right-back, left-back and wing-back for Forest and has the physicality to shift into the right of a three if required, which is the most likely emergency fix. Nicolò Savona is another right-sided defender comfortable tucking inside. Neco Williams has spent his Forest career being asked to fill in wherever the team needs him, and did it well enough that Tottenham reportedly tested the club’s resolve over him last month – Forest were not selling.
Further up, captain Ryan Yates and Ibrahim Sangaré are both tall, aggressive midfielders who could drop into a back line for forty minutes if a game demanded it. It is not a plan. It is a fire extinguisher, and every Premier League squad keeps one.
The other lever is the shape itself. Glasner is not dogmatic about the three – a switch to a back four when resources are thin would ask for two central defenders rather than three and immediately make the squad look healthier. Losing the wing-back platform that gets Muñoz and Dan Ndoye high up the pitch is the price.
The case that this is fine
There is a decent one, and it starts with the fact that Forest chose this. No club sanctions two loan exits in the same position on deadline day unless it has looked at the numbers and decided it can live with them.
Glasner has always preferred a small squad. Fewer players means more meaningful training minutes, clearer hierarchies and less of the low-level unhappiness that comes from a bloated bench. There is no European football at the City Ground this season, so the fixture list is 38 league games plus whatever the FA Cup brings after an early Carabao Cup exit to Leeds United – light, by the standards of a club that has just spent £101m.
And there are only 16 league fixtures between Saturday and the January window opening. If the defensive situation does become genuinely stretched, Forest can go back to the market in the winter; we have set out what Glasner still needs in January in full. Morato’s West Ham loan and Abbott’s Southampton deal are both season-long, so neither looks like a January recall option, but a fifth centre-back is not a difficult thing to buy in a winter window if the need is obvious.
The risk, stated plainly
The risk is not that Forest run out of centre-backs. It is that they run out of good ones at the wrong moment. Milenković has been the most durable defender at the club, but he is also the one who plays close to every minute of every game, and squads that rely on a player always being available are the squads that get punished for it.
Forest are also still without a win in 2026/27, which sharpens everything. They lost 1-0 at home to Leeds on the opening weekend, lost 2-0 to the same opponents in the Carabao Cup three days later, and then drew 2-2 at Liverpool on 29 August, with Ndoye and Morgan Gibbs-White scoring and Delap making his debut. That Anfield display was much closer to the side supporters recognise, but taking nothing from the opening home game means the margin for a defensive injury crisis in October is thinner than it looks.
Spurs first
All of which is theory until 3pm on Saturday 6 September, when Tottenham Hotspur arrive at the City Ground. Glasner will name a back three, it will almost certainly feature Milenković, Murillo and Diomande, and the depth question will stay hypothetical for another week.
It is worth remembering that a squad looking light in one position is not the same as a squad in trouble. Forest kept the players who mattered, spent properly on the ones they wanted and did it before the panic set in. But a back line four deep for a 38-game season is a calculated gamble, and the Reds will need Jair Cunha to be ready considerably sooner than they planned. Confirmed team news, as always, comes from the official Nottingham Forest website.
