Nottingham Forest Andre transfer talks are back on. Eight days after the summer window shut at 11pm on 1 September with the Reds’ midfield reinforced by exactly one signing, Brazilian outlet RTI Esporte reports that Forest and Corinthians are still in “negotiations” over the 20-year-old midfielder – this time with a January move in mind. Corinthians have put a £15m price on him, plus £6m in add-ons. Forest, by that account, are trying to get both numbers down.
It is the second act of a saga that appeared to have ended in silence. As we set out last week, Forest’s August bid died not in a boardroom row but in a void: an offer went in, a counter-offer came back inside ninety minutes, and nothing was heard again.
What actually happened in August
The timeline comes from Corinthians themselves, and it is unusually precise. Speaking before this week’s update, club executive Marcelo Paz laid out the sequence in comments carried by the Nottingham Post: “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. We received this offer at exactly 8.28pm (Brazil time). At 9.54pm, Corinthians presented their counter offer. After that, nothing else came.”
Reported in sterling at the time as around £10m, the bid was rejected. Forest’s interest in the player surfaced publicly a few days later, at the point when Oliver Glasner was still telling reporters he expected at least one more arrival. What followed instead was a scramble that produced Daniel Muñoz from Crystal Palace on 31 August and no midfielder at all.
The reason the story has legs is that Andre was always likely to move. Reports in August indicated the player’s own preference was for a European club, and that a switch was expected at the end of the Brazilian season – which falls, conveniently for a Premier League club, in December.
The new stance from Corinthians
Paz has now gone further, telling CNN that a deal remains live precisely because it was never tied to the English window in the first place. “The idea is that he (Andre) can be negotiated, but only delivered at the end of the year,” he said. “The English transfer window is closed. However, negotiations were conducted independently of the window, meaning with the possibility of Andre leaving in January.”
He was blunt about why Corinthians want it done: “So, this negotiation can still happen and would be a relief for the club’s finances, an important resource. If the sale goes through, there’s a sporting loss, but there’s a significant financial gain for the club.”
Read it as what it is – a selling club talking its own asset up in public – and it still tells you two useful things. Corinthians need the money, and they are not pretending otherwise. That is the sort of position a buyer with patience can work with, which is roughly what Forest appear to be doing by pushing back on both the fee and the bonus structure rather than meeting the ask.
Why Forest still need a midfielder
Because the summer did not solve the problem it was supposed to solve. Elliot Anderson left for Manchester City for a club-record £116m, and the replacement was Xaver Schlager, a free transfer from RB Leipzig. Schlager is a fine footballer and, at that price, excellent business. He is not, on his own, a like-for-like answer to the loss of a 23-year-old England international who had become the engine of the side.
The current midfield department reads: Ibrahim Sangaré, Nicolás Domínguez, Morgan Gibbs-White, Schlager, captain Ryan Yates and James McAtee. That is six senior players for a system – Glasner’s 3-4-2-1 – which asks two central midfielders to cover an enormous amount of ground and two attacking midfielders to create nearly everything. Gibbs-White has been managing a knee problem since late August. Sangaré’s availability has already been a talking point once this season.
Forest spent roughly £101m across the summer on five first-team signings, as our guide to the 2026 ins and outs records, and the centre of the pitch was the one area they publicly wanted to strengthen and did not. Two bids for Newcastle’s Jacob Murphy were rejected; an advanced £40m move for Everton’s Harrison Armstrong collapsed and he stayed at Goodison. The midfield gap is the loudest item on the January list, and one of several targets Glasner could revisit.
What £15m buys in this market
Some context on the number, because it is the part that makes the story credible rather than fanciful. Corinthians’ asking price of £15m plus £6m in add-ons is less than a fifth of what Forest received for Anderson, and less than a third of the reported £50m the club paid Chelsea for Liam Delap in August. Set against the fees Forest have banked in recent years, it is a small piece of business.
What Forest are haggling over, then, is not really affordability. It is structure – the balance between guaranteed money and bonuses, and how those bonuses are triggered. That is a familiar sticking point in deals with South American clubs, where the selling side often wants the headline figure loaded at the front to ease immediate cash-flow pressure while the buyer wants as much as possible contingent on appearances and performance. Paz’s own framing – “a relief for the club’s finances” – makes clear which side of that argument Corinthians are on.
It also explains why a deal that has been talked about since 22 August has still not been signed at what is, for a Premier League club, a modest price. Nobody is far apart on valuation. They are apart on when the money lands.
The complication nobody is talking about
Forest’s football operation has changed shape since August. Edu, the club’s global head of football since July 2025, left when his contract was terminated in the week beginning 1 September – a departure that was reported rather than formally announced. Theodore Giannikos has come in as chief executive. The people who opened the Andre file are not entirely the same people who will have to close it.
That matters for a deal whose failure was attributed, by the selling club, to a message that never arrived. Cross-continental negotiations with a Brazilian side mid-restructure are exactly the sort of thing that falls through the cracks of a reorganisation. If Forest genuinely want this player in January, someone has to own the relationship – and Paz’s pointed line about hearing “nothing else” after 9.54pm on 22 August reads like a man who has already noticed.
Nottingham Forest Andre transfer: how likely is it?
Reasonably, on the available evidence – with the usual caveat that this is a report from a Brazilian outlet plus quotes from a selling club, not a Forest position. Nothing has been confirmed by anyone at the City Ground.
What lines up is the timing. The Brazilian season ends in December, the English window opens on 1 January, the player wants Europe, the club wants cash, and the buying club has an obvious hole in its squad. At a total package of £21m for a 20-year-old, the deal also sits comfortably inside the kind of money Forest have shown they will spend, and the profile fits a recruitment pattern – young, high-ceiling, resale value – that the £116m Anderson sale rather emphatically validated.
What works against it is that four months is a long time in a market where Andre will not be Forest’s secret. A midfielder available at £15m with a European preference and an agent already in dialogue with the Premier League will attract company.
What happens next
Nothing, for a while. The window does not open until January, the Brazilian league runs to December, and Forest have more immediate problems: two points from three Premier League games, no win yet in 2026/27, and a trip to Aston Villa at Villa Park at 3pm on Saturday once the September international break clears.
But the file is open, which is more than could be said a week ago. For a squad that ended the summer with its midfield thinner than the head coach wanted, that is not the worst news to come out of Brazil.
Transfer confirmations arrive via the official Nottingham Forest website and Corinthians’ official site, with registration and squad-list rules published by the Premier League.
