Nicolas Dominguez Nottingham Forest profile: of all the midfielders Oliver Glasner inherited this summer, the Argentine is the one whose best version would answer the most questions. Forest have started 2026/27 with two points from three games and a midfield that has been reshaped twice over — and Dominguez, wearing the number eight, sits right in the middle of that puzzle ahead of Saturday’s trip to Aston Villa.
Here is who he is, how he got to the City Ground, and why his role matters so much in Glasner’s system.
Who is Nicolas Dominguez?
Dominguez is an Argentine central midfielder, born in 1998 and raised in the Velez Sarsfield academy in Buenos Aires. Velez have a long record of producing technically secure, physically willing midfielders, and he fitted the mould: he broke into the first team as a teenager and quickly became a regular in a side that trusts its young players far earlier than most European clubs would.
That form earned a move to Europe. Bologna agreed a deal for him in January 2020, and after a short delay he joined the Serie A club permanently, where he spent three and a half seasons. Italy did what Italy usually does to a young South American midfielder — it sharpened his positional discipline, taught him when not to press, and gave him the tactical vocabulary he had not needed in Argentina. He is also a full Argentina international, which for a country of that depth in midfield is a genuine marker of quality.
How he joined the Reds
Forest signed him on transfer deadline day in January 2024, a window in which the Reds were fighting relegation and needed legs and composure in equal measure. The fee was reported at around £10m, modest by the standards of the club’s more recent business — a point that looks even starker set against the record sales Forest have since banked and the club-record outlay on Liam Delap this summer.
He arrived as a squad-builder and became something more useful than that: a midfielder a manager can put into almost any game without the shape falling over. He has been at the club through survival, through a season that redefined what Forest supporters expected of themselves, and now through a second managerial change in barely a year.
What kind of midfielder is he?
Dominguez is a genuine eight rather than a holder or a creator. His strongest qualities are the unglamorous ones: he covers ground, he presses in the right sequence rather than simply running at the ball, and he is comfortable enough in tight areas to take a pass under pressure and move Forest up the pitch rather than sideways.
The part of his game that gets least credit is his timing into the box. He is at his best when the move goes away from him and he arrives late at the edge of the area, which is exactly the kind of run that a low block struggles to track. Where he can be frustrating is consistency of intensity across 90 minutes — the good version of Dominguez is a nuisance for a full match, and the quieter version drifts to the edges of the game.
The Nicolas Dominguez Nottingham Forest role under Glasner
Glasner has built his Forest side around a back three and wing-backs, with two central midfielders screening in front of the defence and two attackers supporting the striker. It is a system that asks an enormous amount of that midfield pair: they have to protect a defence that can be exposed when the wing-backs are high, and they have to be the first pass out of trouble when Forest win the ball back. You can read more on how Glasner’s 3-4-2-1 works and on the head coach himself.
The competition is serious. Captain Ryan Yates brings the aggression and the dressing-room standing, Ibrahim Sangare offers physical presence, and Xaver Schlager arrived on a free from RB Leipzig in the summer as a midfielder who has already played Glasner-style pressing football in Germany and Austria. Ahead of them, James McAtee and Morgan Gibbs-White occupy the two advanced slots.
That makes Dominguez a player who has to win his place rather than assume it. His case is that he does more things adequately than anyone else in the group does: he is more press-resistant than Yates, more mobile over a full pitch than Sangare, and more familiar with English football than Schlager. In a season where Forest have to find a way to control games they are currently drawing and losing, that versatility has value.
Why this season matters for him
The sale of Elliot Anderson to Manchester City removed Forest’s most progressive midfielder and, at a reported £116m, a very large chunk of certainty about who carries the ball forward. Schlager was signed partly to replace that function; the rest of it has to come from inside the existing group. Dominguez is the obvious candidate to take some of it on.
There is also a broader point about Glasner’s standards. The head coach has already made clear publicly that he expects more from players who have settled for being solid — the message he delivered to Murillo about not being content as an “okay” player applies just as neatly to a midfielder who has spent two and a half years being reliable without ever quite becoming indispensable.
The verdict
Dominguez is not the most expensive, most gifted or most talked-about midfielder at the City Ground, and he has never pretended to be. He is the one whose ceiling is least well understood, because he has spent his Forest career being asked to plug gaps rather than to own a role. Glasner’s system, which rewards midfielders who can press in a structure and arrive in the box late, is arguably the best fit he has had since he arrived from Bologna.
If Forest are going to turn draws into wins — starting at Villa Park — they need a midfield that does more than survive. Dominguez has the profile to be part of that. The next few months will tell us whether he becomes it.
Squad and career details checked against the official Nottingham Forest website and the Premier League.
