James McAtee arrived at Nottingham Forest with a reputation built almost entirely on what he could do with the ball in the final third. A year on, the most interesting thing about the Reds’ No.24 is where he has ended up standing. Oliver Glasner has pulled him back into the engine room, and it has worked well enough that Forest went through an entire summer window without signing the midfielder they were widely expected to chase.
Who is James McAtee?
McAtee was born in Salford in October 2002 and joined Manchester City’s academy as a child, coming through a system that by then had become the most productive in the country. He was, by some distance, the standout creative player of his age group there — good enough that he picked up the nickname “the Salford Silva” in City’s youth ranks, a comparison to David Silva that says everything about the type of footballer he was expected to become.
He made his senior City debut in 2021 and appeared in the cups and the Champions League, but the arithmetic at the Etihad in that era was brutal for any young attacking midfielder. So City did what City do: they sent him out to learn the trade properly.
The Sheffield United education
Two loan seasons at Sheffield United turned him from a promising academy graduate into a footballer. The first, in the Championship, ended in promotion. The second was in the Premier League with a struggling side, which is a much harsher classroom — fewer touches, less space, more defending, and a season spent mostly without the ball.
That is the spell that matters most in understanding the player Forest have. A creative No.10 who has already spent a top-flight season in a team that had to graft is a very different proposition to one who has only ever played in possession-dominant sides. He came out of it more robust, more willing to press and far better at picking his moments.
Alongside the club football came the international honours that made his eventual price tag inevitable. McAtee won the European Under-21 Championship with England in 2023 and again in 2025, and at the second of those tournaments he was named its outstanding player.
How James McAtee joined Nottingham Forest
He signed for Forest from Manchester City in the summer of 2025, for a fee reported at the time to be in the region of £30m. It was the sort of signing the club had begun to specialise in: a homegrown Premier League-proven talent still in his early twenties, bought at the point where his ceiling was still unclear.
He wears No.24. Our guide to Nottingham Forest’s squad numbers for 2026/27 has the full first-team list.
What kind of midfielder is he?
Technically, McAtee is a receiver. His best quality is what he does in the half-second after the ball reaches him: he takes it on the back foot, turns away from pressure and plays forward. In a league where most midfielders are pressed the instant they touch it, being difficult to trap is worth more than a highlight reel of through balls.
He is a left-footed player who drifts to the right, which is a familiar pattern for anyone who has watched a lot of City academy football, and he is at his most dangerous arriving in the box late rather than starting in it. He is not a physical presence and he is not a ball-winner in the classic sense, but the Sheffield United years taught him to work, and Glasner’s sides do not carry passengers.
The deeper role under Glasner
This is the part that has changed. Glasner, appointed in July 2026, sets his team up in a back three with two wing-backs and two attacking midfielders behind a striker — our breakdown of the 3-4-2-1 explains how the shape works. On paper, McAtee is an obvious fit for one of those two advanced positions.
Instead, the head coach has spent much of his first months at the City Ground using him deeper, in the pair in front of the defence, and the results have been persuasive. The Nottingham Post reported this week that McAtee impressing in that deeper role was one of the reasons the need for extra midfield reinforcements slipped down Forest’s priority list over the summer, after Xaver Schlager’s arrival on a free transfer from RB Leipzig.
It makes tactical sense. A team that wants to build through midfield needs at least one player back there who can receive under pressure and turn, and Forest’s other options in that area — Ibrahim Sangaré, captain Ryan Yates, Schlager, Nicolás Domínguez — are more destroyers and runners than they are creators. Dropping McAtee in beside one of them gives Glasner a route out of the first line of a press without asking a centre-back to hit a 40-yard pass.
The counter-argument is the obvious one: it is a lot of a player’s best quality to spend 40 yards from goal. That tension is the story of his season.
Where he fits now
Forest are still waiting for a first win of 2026/27 after a home defeat by Leeds, a 2-2 draw at Liverpool and a goalless afternoon against Tottenham at the City Ground, and they travel to Aston Villa when the international break ends. Goals, not control, are the shortfall — which is precisely why the debate about where McAtee plays has bite.
With Morgan Gibbs-White managing a knee problem, the case for pushing McAtee forward into the No.10 role gets stronger every time the talisman is unavailable. There is also the ready-made familiarity with Liam Delap, a fellow Manchester City academy graduate and now the club’s record signing, to make use of higher up the pitch.
Either way, McAtee has become one of the more valuable players in the squad simply by being usable in two places at once. For a 23-year-old still some way short of his peak, that is a decent position to be in — and for Forest, the more he keeps doing it, the less pressing January’s midfield shopping list becomes. Squad and fixture details are published by the club on the official Nottingham Forest website, with appearance records for every top-flight player on the Premier League site.
