Oliver Glasner has told Murillo that “okay” is not good enough at Nottingham Forest, challenging the Brazilian to rediscover the level that made him one of the Premier League’s most coveted young defenders. Speaking ahead of Saturday’s trip to Aston Villa, the Reds head coach said Murillo’s fitness is “getting better and better” after a hamstring problem wrecked his summer — but made clear the club expect considerably more than what they have seen so far this season.
Why Glasner has set Murillo a challenge
The context matters. Murillo missed the end of last season and the start of pre-season with a hamstring injury, an absence that ran to roughly four months. He has still started all three of Forest’s opening Premier League fixtures, but he has completed the full 90 minutes only once, and he was withdrawn in the closing stages of last weekend’s goalless draw with Tottenham Hotspur at the City Ground.
After that game, Glasner was blunt: Murillo had not come back from his summer break in “the shape he should come back”. Five days on, the tone was warmer but the standard being demanded had not shifted.
“I have spoken to him regularly, just like the other players,” Glasner said. “His fitness is getting better and better. He played his first 45 minutes of football during the (pre-season) training camp in Portugal, which was five weeks ago and he had been out for four months.”
‘His standards are not to be an okay player’
The head coach then delivered the line that will travel furthest with supporters — an assessment that is part backing, part public prod.
“It is about getting rhythm. He has been involved in every training session, he has played in most of the games and he is getting closer and closer to his top fitness level,” Glasner told the Nottingham Post. “It might have maybe taken longer than we expected and he has produced okay performances.
“But we all know that his standards are not to be an okay player for Forest, they are to be a top player and a top defender — he has all the potential and skills for this.”
Glasner was careful to frame it as support rather than criticism. “We will support him until he is, hopefully, even better than he has been before. He is really working hard. He is on track.”
That last phrase is the one worth holding on to. For a defender whose ceiling has never been in doubt — Murillo’s reputation was built on recovery pace, front-foot aggression and a willingness to defend enormous amounts of space — the issue has been sharpness rather than ability. You can read the full story of his rise at the City Ground in our profile of Forest’s No.5.
The Jair Cunha subplot
There is an unavoidable subplot here, and Glasner was asked about it directly. Murillo’s fellow Brazilian and Forest centre-back partner Jair Cunha has just received his first senior call-up for Brazil, at 21, for a double-header against Australia and a friendly with India. Murillo has been in a Brazil squad before and will want to be again.
Asked whether Jair’s call-up could act as a spur, Glasner pushed back on the premise.
“I hope that he does not need this motivation,” he said. “Every player should have an intrinsic motivation to improve and to be rewarded for that by being called up to play for their country. The focus must be on what they have to do to get called up. That is what I have tried to explain — the focus to do what Jair has done, from day one, to get called up.”
He widened the point to the rest of the dressing room, name-checking James McAtee, the player of the tournament when England won the 2025 Under-21 European Championship. The message to a squad that has only just been assembled: international recognition is the by-product of doing the daily work, not a target in itself. Glasner’s fuller remarks on Jair’s selection are covered in our piece on the Brazil call-up.
What it means for Villa Park
Forest travel to Villa Park on Saturday at 3pm still searching for a first win of 2026/27 — two points from three games, following a home defeat to Leeds United, a 2-2 draw at Liverpool and that stalemate with Spurs. Nicolò Savona remains the only absentee, with the rest of the squad having trained all week, as set out in our team news round-up.
Nothing in Glasner’s language suggests Murillo is at risk of losing his place. What it does suggest is that the head coach has decided the recovery period is over and the performance period has begun. Forest’s defence has not been the problem in these opening weeks — one goal conceded from open play in two of the three games — but a back three built to defend high up the pitch needs its quickest defender operating at full capacity.
Get Murillo back to his best, and Glasner has one of the better ball-winning centre-backs in the division available for a run of fixtures that will define whether Forest’s slow start becomes a genuine problem. That, in essence, is the challenge.
Kick-off times and broadcast details for Saturday are confirmed by the Premier League, with squad information published on the official Nottingham Forest website.
