Of the five first-team signings Nottingham Forest made during the summer of 2026, Xaver Schlager arrived with the least noise. There was no club-record fee, no deadline-day drama and no bidding war – just an experienced Austria international walking through the door on a free transfer from RB Leipzig. Yet of all the additions Oliver Glasner made, Schlager may prove to be the one who quietly holds the whole thing together.
Here is everything Reds supporters need to know about the midfielder wearing No.21 at the City Ground.
Who is Xaver Schlager?
Schlager is an Austrian central midfielder, born in Linz on 28 September 1997. He came through the Red Bull Salzburg system – the production line that has also given the Premier League the likes of Erling Haaland, Dominik Szoboszlai and Konrad Laimer – serving the customary apprenticeship with feeder side FC Liefering before breaking into the Salzburg first team.
That grounding matters, because Salzburg do not teach a passive brand of football. Schlager was raised on aggressive, front-foot pressing, on winning the ball high and going again immediately, and on covering enormous distances without complaint. He collected Austrian league titles and domestic cups along the way, and by the time he left he was regarded as one of the most complete young midfielders in the country.
Wolfsburg, Leipzig and a serious setback
Schlager moved to Germany with VfL Wolfsburg in the summer of 2019 and spent three seasons in the Bundesliga, establishing himself as a reliable, high-volume presence in midfield and helping Wolfsburg into the Champions League. RB Leipzig came for him in 2022, and it was there that he added a Bundesliga DFB-Pokal winner’s medal to his collection, lifting the trophy in 2023.
His Leipzig spell was not without difficulty. A cruciate knee ligament injury sustained in early 2025 cost him the best part of a year, and by the time he had worked his way back, the club’s midfield had moved on around him. His contract ran down, and Forest were able to sign a 28-year-old with more than 200 senior appearances in Germany’s top division without paying a penny in transfer fee.
Internationally, Schlager has been a fixture for Austria since making his senior debut in 2018, passing 40 caps and featuring at a European Championship. He is the sort of player national-team coaches trust implicitly and supporters occasionally overlook – which, as it happens, is a fair description of his role at club level too.
What kind of midfielder is he?
Schlager is a No.8 in the modern German-school sense: a runner, a duel-winner and a presser rather than a deep-lying conductor. He is not the man who will drop between the centre-backs and dictate tempo for 90 minutes; he is the man who gets to the second ball first, who closes down a full-back before that full-back has settled, and who covers the ground when a team-mate steps out of position.
His numbers across his Bundesliga career have consistently been built on volume – distance covered, high-intensity sprints, tackles and interceptions in the middle third. He is also comfortable enough in possession to keep things ticking, and he is a genuinely intelligent presser, which is a different skill from simply being an energetic one. Knowing when to jump is what separates a functioning press from a chaotic one.
Why he fits Oliver Glasner’s Forest
Glasner is, like Schlager, an Austrian, and his football has always demanded a particular kind of engine room. The head coach’s preferred back-three systems ask the two central midfielders to protect wide areas, screen the defence and shuttle across the pitch relentlessly while the wing-backs push high. That is a physically punishing job description, and it happens to be precisely the job Schlager has done for the last seven years in Germany.
It also gives Glasner something Forest badly needed: depth in the middle. The sale of Elliot Anderson to Manchester City for a club-record £116 million removed the squad’s most dynamic midfielder in a single stroke, and while Ryan Yates offers leadership as captain and Ibrahim Sangáré, Nicolás Domínguez and James McAtee all bring different qualities, none of them replicates Anderson’s ball-winning output. Schlager is not a like-for-like replacement – nobody on a free transfer is going to be – but he is a proven, low-risk way of restoring some of that lost ground coverage. You can read more about how Glasner likes his teams to play here.
What to expect this season
Forest have taken two points from their opening three Premier League games, with draws away at Liverpool and at home to Tottenham Hotspur sandwiching an opening-day defeat by Leeds United, and are still chasing a first win of 2026/27 ahead of Saturday’s trip to Aston Villa. The pattern so far has been encouraging out of possession and frustrating in front of goal.
That context suits Schlager. If Glasner’s Reds are going to grind out results while the attack finds its rhythm, they will do it by being difficult to play through in midfield – and by turning defensive work into quick transitions. Schlager’s value will not usually show up on a highlights reel or on a scoresheet. It will show up in the games Forest do not lose.
Fitness is the obvious caveat. A player returning from a long-term knee injury needs managing, and it would be no surprise to see Schlager used in rotation early on rather than asked to play every minute. But on a free transfer, with a Champions League and DFB-Pokal pedigree and a manager who has spent his career asking for exactly what this player does best, it is hard to see the downside. The Tricky Trees may have signed the least glamorous player of their summer. They may also have signed the most useful.
