Ola Aina has quietly become one of the most useful footballers at Nottingham Forest. He is not the club-record signing, he is not the talisman and he has never been the name on the back of the most shirts in the Trent End — but across three seasons he has covered both flanks, three different systems and four head coaches without ever looking out of place. Now, with Oliver Glasner’s wing-back structure bedding in and two specialists signed or tied down around him, the Reds’ No.34 faces the most competitive season of his City Ground career.
Who is Ola Aina?
Temitayo Olufisayo Olaoluwa Aina was born in Southwark, London, in October 1996, to Nigerian parents. He came through the Chelsea academy in the same era that produced a generation of highly rated Cobham graduates, winning youth honours at Stamford Bridge and making a small number of senior appearances before the familiar problem arrived: at Chelsea, breaking through and staying through are two very different things.
A loan spell at Hull City in the Championship gave him regular senior football, and in 2018 he moved to Torino in Serie A — initially on loan, then permanently. That Italian education matters more than it might look. Torino played a back three for much of his time there, which means Aina had already spent years operating as a wing-back long before he arrived in Nottingham. A loan back to the Premier League with Fulham followed in 2020/21.
How Ola Aina joined Nottingham Forest
He left Torino as a free agent in the summer of 2023 and, after a period without a club, signed for Forest in September 2023. It has proved one of the shrewdest pieces of business of the Reds’ Premier League era: a full international, still in his twenties, with Serie A and Premier League experience, for no fee at all.
Aina became a fixture as Forest established themselves in the division, and was a regular in the side that produced the club’s best top-flight finish in decades in 2024/25. He wears No.34, a number he has kept through squad reshuffles — the full list is in our guide to Nottingham Forest’s squad numbers for 2026/27.
What kind of full-back is he?
The short answer is: whichever one you need. Aina is naturally left-footed but has spent the bulk of his Forest career at right-back, which is unusual and genuinely useful. It gives him a different set of options to a right-footed defender in the same position — he can come inside onto his stronger foot to cross or switch play, rather than being funnelled down the touchline every time.
His defensive profile is built on recovery pace. Aina is quick in a straight line and comfortable defending large spaces one-on-one, which is exactly the quality a team that sits deep and counter-attacks needs from its wide defenders. In the compact, counter-punching Forest sides of recent seasons, that made him close to undroppable.
Going forward, he is a carrier more than a creator: he will take the ball past an opponent and drive into the final third, but he is not a full-back whose game is built on volume crossing or set-piece delivery. He is also, by the standards of the position, remarkably durable.
Nigeria, and an Africa Cup of Nations final
Aina represented England at youth level before switching his international allegiance to Nigeria, making his senior debut for the Super Eagles in 2017. He has since become a mainstay of the national side.
His peak on that stage came at the Africa Cup of Nations staged in Ivory Coast in early 2024, where Nigeria reached the final and lost to the hosts. Aina’s tournament was outstanding — he was among the standout defenders in the competition and was named in the official team of the tournament. International windows do take him a long way from Nottingham, which is a trade-off Forest have always accepted.
Where does Aina fit under Oliver Glasner?
This is the live question. Glasner, appointed in July 2026, builds his teams around a back three and two hard-running wing-backs, and Forest spent the summer stocking that position properly. Daniel Muñoz arrived from Crystal Palace on deadline day, reuniting with the coach he thrived under in south London. On the other side, Neco Williams signed a new contract to 2030 earlier this month. Luca Netz and Nicolò Savona are also on the books.
That is a crowded corridor. But Aina’s case is a strong one, and it rests on the two-footed flexibility described above: in a system where both wing-backs are asked to sprint the length of the pitch repeatedly, a defender who can do the job competently on either side is worth more than a squad number suggests. Rotation is not optional in a 3-4-2-1 — it is structural. Our breakdown of Glasner’s 3-4-2-1 explains why the flanks carry so much of the load.
There is a defensive argument too. Glasner’s back three has looked short of senior cover at times this season, and Aina has enough positional intelligence to tuck in as a wide centre-back in a pinch, something plenty of converted full-backs cannot do.
The season ahead
Forest are still waiting for a first win of 2026/27 after a draw at Liverpool and a goalless afternoon against Tottenham at the City Ground, and travel to Aston Villa when the international break ends. Glasner’s system is not yet producing the goals it should, and the two wing-back berths are where the head coach has invested most heavily in trying to change that.
Aina’s role, then, may look different from the near-ever-present it has been. That is not a demotion so much as the price of a squad that spent around £101m in a single summer. What has never been in doubt is the standard he holds when he plays — and for a player who arrived on a free transfer, three years of it has already been a bargain. Squad and fixture information is published by the club on the official Nottingham Forest website, with appearance records for every top-flight player on the Premier League site.
