On Thursday, former Tottenham full-back Serge Aurier became the latest player to be linked to Nottingham Forest – he would become their 17th signing of the summer.
The Ivory Coast international would join an impressive cast of newcomers at the City Ground that includes the likes of Jesse Lingard, Morgan Gibbs-White and Taiwo Awoniyi.
Forest have forked out transfer fees totalling almost £150m as they have committed to spending big to boost their hopes of survival in a first top-flight campaign in 23 years. And it appears they are not yet finished, with rumours of further additions in the final week of the transfer window.
But the staggering number of incomings at last season’s Championship play-off winners has raised the question of, when it comes to recruiting for Premier League survival, how much is too much?
“The more players you bring in and the more alterations you do, the more difficult it becomes, the more of a gamble you’re taking,” insists George Burley, who guided Ipswich to promotion in 2000 before finishing fifth in their first campaign back in the top flight.
“It’s much more difficult when you’re bringing a lot of new players into a team. It can take time and it can backfire on you.”
But while the sheer number of signings to be integrated presents a difficult task for manager Steve Cooper, Phil Brown – who steered Hull City to Premier League promotion in 2008 – believes the Forest boss is a key reason why the club were able to attract so many high-profile arrivals.
“To attract the right kind of player to the football club would depend on the style of football Steve Cooper was going to play,” Brown suggests. “I think it was interesting that he got them promoted on a style of football that was getting lots of plaudits from other managers such as Jurgen Klopp. That attracted a lot of attention to Steve Cooper more in particular than Notts Forest.
“An awful lot of managers now, they are huge on how they play and their philosophy about football. That in itself attracts the likes of Jesse Lingard from bigger clubs.”
Steve Coppell has overseen three top-flight promotions in his managerial career, twice with Crystal Palace and a third time with Reading in 2006. Each time he has taken a side up, he has prioritised continuity over mass recruitment.
That hasn’t been an option for Forest this season, having lost more than half of their promotion squad to sales and expired loans. But Coppell also believes a manager must recognise when upgrades are needed before it’s too late.
| Taiwo Awoniyi (Union Berlin) | Wayne Hennessey (Burnley) |
| Dean Henderson (Man Utd) | Brandon Aguilera (Alajuelense) |
| Giulian Biancone (Troyes) | Harry Toffolo (Huddersfield) |
| Moussa Niakhate (Mainz) | Lewis O’Brien (Huddersfield) |
| Omar Richards (Bayern Munich) | Jesse Lingard (Free) |
| Neco Williams (Liverpool) | Orel Mangala (Stuttgart) |
| Morgan Gibbs-White (Wolves) | Emmanuel Dennis (Watford) |
| Cheikhou Kouyate (Free) | Remo Freuler (Atalanta) |
“In my experience, what I’ve found is when you get promotion, your natural instinct is to give the players who got you promoted an opportunity,” Coppell says.
“They’ve got you there – you want to repay that debt by giving them the opportunity to sink or swim.
“At Reading, they were all hungry and never played in the Premier League before. We were desperate to give them the opportunity and they repaid that faith. We finished eighth. With Palace my first time, we didn’t have a great deal of money to spend big in the market, so we didn’t. We tried to repay the faith.
“But after we got beat 9-0 by Liverpool, it became obvious that what we had wasn’t good enough. So [chairman] Ron Noades dug very deep and we made significant signings to maintain our status, and it worked.”
Paul Jewell subscribed to a similar theory of standing by the players who’d earned promotion when he took Bradford and Wigan up to the top flight, in 1999 and 2004 respectively. Without the funds to invest heavily in the transfer market, he chose to incentivise the players already under his command.
“At Wigan, we didn’t know which lads were going to be good enough for the Premier League, but we knew they certainly wouldn’t lack for desire, hard work, because they’d been doing it for the last four years with me.
“We decided to improve their contracts, but rather than give them guaranteed money, we made it very attractive for them to be in the team. If they were playing games, they were getting very well paid. We finished 10th and got to a cup final. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts.
“I remember [chairman] Dave Whelan saying to me when we got promoted, ‘Look, let’s not be silly. If we get relegated, let’s go down in good shape; not financial ruin. Then we’ve got the parachute money and we can use that to come again.’ With Nottingham Forest, if it goes wrong, what are they going to be left with? It’s a tightrope. If they finish in the top half, it’s money well spent.”
Forest aren’t the first promoted side to spend heavily in an effort to stave off a swift return to the second tier.
Fulham spent £150.3m in 2018 and Aston Villa splashed £144.5m upon their Premier League return the following season. And the fortunes of those two clubs proved money alone offers no guarantees: Fulham were relegated after finishing with just 26 points; Villa survived, but only just, finishing one place outside the drop zone.
“I’m fascinated by what Nottingham Forest have done and how it’s going to work out,” says Coppell.
“If I was a coach and had so many new players coming in, it would be the most difficult thing to incorporate them within the squad. It’s a huge challenge for the manager.
“If Forest survive comfortably, it is without doubt a formula that a number of clubs in the future will follow.”
