Arnaud Kalimuendo Nottingham Forest searches spike every time a window opens, and they spiked again this summer. The France-born forward was linked with an exit almost from the moment Oliver Glasner walked through the door, and he is still here — wearing No 15, still in the mix at Villa Park on Saturday, and still one of the more misunderstood players in the Reds’ squad. Here is who he is, what he cost, and why Forest’s head coach was so determined to keep hold of him.
Arnaud Kalimuendo Nottingham Forest profile: the basics
- Position: centre-forward, comfortable wide left or as a second striker
- Squad number: 15
- Age: 24 (born January 2002)
- Nationality: France (youth international up to Under-21 level)
- Signed: summer 2025, from Stade Rennais, for an initial reported £26m
That fee puts him inside Forest’s ten most expensive signings of all time, which is context worth holding on to. Nobody at the City Ground spends that kind of money on a squad player.
From the PSG academy to two seasons at Lens
Kalimuendo came through at Paris Saint-Germain, a place where an academy striker’s problem is never talent and always opportunity — the queue in front of him in Paris was, at various points, among the most expensive attacking line-up ever assembled. So PSG did what PSG do with promising forwards, and loaned him out.
Those two seasons at RC Lens are the ones that made his name. He was trusted as a genuine first-choice striker in Ligue 1 as a teenager, in a hard-running, high-pressing Lens side that asked its forwards to defend from the front, and he came out of it with a reputation as a finisher who could also do the unglamorous work. That combination is precisely why he keeps ending up in the plans of coaches who demand pressing.
Rennes, and the £26m move to the City Ground
Rennes signed him permanently in the summer of 2022, and Brittany is where he grew from a promising loanee into a Ligue 1 forward with a proper goal return. His final season there was comfortably the most productive of his career, and it is the reason Forest were willing to go to an initial £26m in 2025 — a fee that made him, at the time, one of the biggest outlays of the Evangelos Marinakis era.
What followed was the awkward part. Forest’s attacking department has been rebuilt at speed and at expense: Chris Wood remains the most reliable finisher at the club, Igor Jesus arrived and settled, Taiwo Awoniyi was sold to Coventry City in August, and then the club broke its transfer record for Liam Delap. Four senior centre-forwards, one shirt.
Why Glasner kept him
The logical assumption, once Delap signed on 27 August, was that one of the incumbents would be moved on before the 11pm deadline on 1 September. Glasner had said as much in general terms, telling reporters after the draw at Anfield that if Forest brought in “definitely one, potentially two and probably three signings”, then a similar number would need to leave.
Kalimuendo was not one of them. Forest’s head coach had already gone out of his way, publicly, to explain the value of a forward who can be moved around a front line rather than parked at the tip of it:
“In this system, he can play in three — and maybe even as wing-back if we need an attacking one — and maybe five positions.”
That is not faint praise dressed up as flexibility. In Glasner’s 3-4-2-1 shape, the two players behind the striker and the forward himself are all expected to rotate, press in structured pairs and attack the same channel from different starting points. A striker who can occupy three of those slots without a fortnight of retraining is worth more to that system than a straight goals-per-minute comparison suggests. He scored three times in pre-season, and Forest signalled in August that he would be staying.
Where he fits now
Delap starts as the notional first choice after his debut at Liverpool, but “first choice” is doing a lot of work in a side that has scored twice in three league games and has not scored at all at home this season. Forest have two points from three, are still waiting for a first win under Glasner, and go to Villa Park on Saturday at 3pm.
Kalimuendo’s route into the XI is therefore not only as an out-and-out No 9. He is arguably the most obvious option if Glasner wants a runner alongside Delap rather than behind him, particularly away from home against a side that likes to push its full-backs high. The competition is set out in full in our look at who should lead the line, and where he sits in the pecking order is reflected in our post-window best XI.
What comes next
He was linked with a move away again in early September, with Eintracht Frankfurt among the clubs reported to be interested, but the summer window shut on 1 September and the next opportunity for anyone to act is January. Until then, Kalimuendo is a 24-year-old forward with two Ligue 1 clubs’ worth of top-flight experience, a £26m price tag, and a head coach who has told anyone who will listen that he can fill five roles.
Nottingham Forest have spent two seasons trying to work out what they have in him. The version of him that Glasner describes — mobile, positionally flexible, willing to press — would answer a lot of the questions currently hanging over a front line that cannot score at the City Ground. There is no better time to find out. Broadcast details for Saturday are in our Aston Villa vs Forest how to watch guide, and the full first-team list is in our 2026/27 squad numbers rundown.
