Nottingham Forest ended the summer window on 1 September without a deadline-day arrival, and attention has already turned to the Nottingham Forest January transfer window. Head coach Oliver Glasner has confirmed the Reds walked away from at least two deals they could not get over the line rather than settle for an alternative profile – and the Nottingham Post has named Crystal Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson and Tottenham midfielder Lucas Bergvall among the players Forest could reignite an interest in when the market reopens on 1 January.
What Glasner said about January
Forest spent in the region of £101m across the summer and added five first-team faces: Xaver Schlager on a free from RB Leipzig, Ousmane Diomande from Sporting CP for a reported £34m, back-up goalkeeper Steven Benda on a free, Liam Delap from Chelsea for a club-record fee reported at around £50m, and Daniel Muñoz from Crystal Palace for a reported £22m on 31 August. A sixth signing, Gustavo Sa, arrived and was loaned straight back out.
Quality over quantity was the mantra, and Glasner made no attempt to dress up the quiet finish to the window.
“I said I must be the first manager who helped Mr Marinakis save money,” the Austrian joked last week. “We had one or two more targets but we couldn’t get the deals done for different reasons. They asked if I wanted someone else and I said ‘no’. These transfers would have been prepared well, identifying the profile we wanted to add. We couldn’t get it done, and then it just makes no sense adding another one who doesn’t have the same profile or who we don’t know and just costs a lot of money.”
He added: “Let’s save the money now, let’s assess and if we believe in January – it is just four months, we are not talking about decades – then we are 100 per cent prepared. For every single position, we should have the top three or four targets who suit the way we want to play, and then we do it. Or if the players are doing very well, we don’t do anything.”
That is about as clear a statement of intent as a Forest head coach has given this early in a season: the recruitment list exists, it is position-specific, and it will only be acted on if the squad tells him it needs acting on. With no European football to juggle this term, Glasner has consistently argued that a lighter schedule does not require a bloated squad – a point that carries extra weight after six players left on loan on deadline day.
Dean Henderson
Glasner raided his former club for Muñoz, and there was talk of a double reunion as deadline day approached, with Henderson emerging as a potential target in the closing days. The 29-year-old remains a popular figure Trentside after his loan spell in 2022/23, when he was still a Manchester United player and kept Forest in the Premier League with a run of high-volume shot-stopping performances.
The complication is that Forest are not short of goalkeepers. Matz Sels remains the incumbent, John Victor is behind him, and Benda was signed in the summer specifically to add senior cover. Any renewed move for Henderson in January would therefore be a statement about the standard Glasner wants in the position rather than a response to a shortage – and it would almost certainly require an exit first.
Lucas Bergvall
The Sweden midfielder was the name Forest fans spent the final week of the window refreshing their timelines for. Reports through late August linked the Reds with a move for the Tottenham 20-year-old, and we covered the state of play on our deadline-day targets round-up. Nothing materialised, and Bergvall was still a Tottenham player when the two sides met at the City Ground on 5 September.
Whether that link is live again in January depends almost entirely on Tottenham’s own midfield picture. What is clear is that the profile – young, ball-progressing, comfortable receiving under pressure between the lines – is exactly what Glasner’s system asks of the players either side of Morgan Gibbs-White.
Jacob Murphy
Forest’s pursuit of the Newcastle United winger was the most public of the summer’s near-misses. Two bids – a reported £10m followed by an improved £15m – were rejected on deadline day, and the 31-year-old stayed on Tyneside.
The logic behind the interest has not gone away. Forest sold Jota Silva to Olympiacos permanently and sent Dilane Bakwa to Lille on loan, leaving Callum Hudson-Odoi and Dan Ndoye carrying the bulk of the wide-forward minutes, with Omari Hutchinson – who joined AC Milan on loan with a reported €40m option – unavailable for the rest of the campaign. A senior, low-maintenance Premier League winger is a sensible mid-season addition, if Newcastle’s valuation ever meets Forest’s.
Harrison Armstrong
The most advanced of the deals that got away. A reported £40m move for the Everton teenager reached a late stage before collapsing on deadline day, and Armstrong stayed at Everton. He is precisely the kind of long-horizon signing Marinakis has been willing to fund since Elliot Anderson’s £116m sale to Manchester City reset the club’s accounts.
Reviving that one in January would be the hardest of the four. Everton had no need to sell in September and will have even less in the middle of a season, but Forest’s interest is documented and the relationship between the clubs is functional. If the fee stretched to £40m once, it can be discussed again.
Where Forest actually need help
Glasner’s stated approach – assess first, act only if required – means the January list will be written by the 15 games Forest play before the window opens rather than by the summer’s regrets. Three areas stand out already.
Centre-back depth is the obvious one. Diomande’s arrival was significant, but Morato left for West Ham United on a season-long loan with an option to buy and Zach Abbott went to Southampton after signing a new Forest deal to 2030, which leaves Diomande, Nikola Milenković, Murillo, Jair Cunha and Tyler Bindon covering a back three across a full campaign. We looked at how thin that cover really is after the window shut.
Wide areas are the second. The third is less about numbers than availability: Gibbs-White’s knee problem, which cost him the Carabao Cup tie against Leeds United on 25 August, is the single injury capable of changing Forest’s shape and their season. He returned to score at Anfield, but the talisman’s fitness will be monitored closely through the autumn.
What happens next
Forest go into the international break still without a win in 2026/27 – two points from three games after the opening-day home defeat to Leeds, the 2-2 draw at Liverpool and Saturday’s 0-0 with Tottenham, in which Neco Williams had a goal disallowed for handball following a VAR review. Performances have been better than the table suggests, but the first three points remain outstanding.
The Reds return to Premier League action away at Aston Villa on Saturday, 3pm, at Villa Park. Off the pitch, Edu’s contract as global head of football was terminated in the week beginning 1 September, meaning the January planning Glasner described will be run through a restructured football department – while Williams’ new contract to 2030, signed on 5 September, showed the club is still content to reward from within.
Nothing here is imminent. The window does not reopen for nearly four months, and Glasner has all but said he would rather do nothing than do something for its own sake. But the top three or four names per position are already written down somewhere at the Nigel Doughty Academy, and on the evidence of the summer, at least a few of them will look familiar.
