Forest's Summer Business - How Does It Compare?

Forest tried to strengthen their squad depth in the summer, but half way through the season it really doesn't feel like that's happened. How does this compare to other teams?

After a fantastic season, qualifying for Europe for the first time in 30 years, Forest wanted to improve the depth in their squad to ensure they could battle on multiple fronts. As we enter the January transfer window, it’s hard to say that their summer work has been a success. Now, I think on most cases it’s too early to write off a lot Forest’s permanent signings - mainly because most of them haven’t seen much time on the pitch - but let’s look at how Forest’s business compared to other Premier League teams.

Looking at permanent outfield transfers only, according to Transfermarkt Nottingham Forest were the 6th highest Premier League spenders.

To make calculations here a little easier (and because at this point in time my player metrics don’t include goalkeepers), here we’ll look at just permanent outfield signings for Premier League clubs. According to Transfermarkt, Forest spent just under £200m on 8 players - this ranked 6th in the Premier League.

After 21 games, Forest’s permanent outfield signings have played just over 5,000 minutes in the Premier League, ranking 8th.

Being the 6th highest spender has resulted in Forest having the 8th most minutes played by these new permanent signings. That’s not necessarily a bad return if we’re just looking at game time. No surprise here to see the top 3 teams being the promoted sides in Sunderland, Burnley & Leeds.

This figure represents 26.98% of available minutes going to these new signings. For clarity, these players are Omari Hutchinson, Dan Ndoye, Dilane Bakwa, Arnaud Kalimuendo, James McAtee, Igor Jesus, Nicolo Savona & Jair Cunha.

Forest have spent just under £40,000 per Premier League minute played by one of these new signings.

Finally from a playing time viewpoint - Forest so far have spent £37,513 for every minute one of these new signings have played. This sounds like a large amount, but is nothing compared to the £80,176 per minute spent by Liverpool. Forest rank 10th in this table.

Using my Player Impact metric, we can total up how impactful these new permanent signings have been in the Premier League.

This is where things get a bit worrying for Forest - despite spending the 6th highest amount of money, and giving the 8th most minutes to these new signings, their combined return on the pitch puts them 13th in the Premier League. This is disappointing when you consider the amount of money spent on players Forest hoped would be affecting the game in the final third.

According to my Player Impact metric, only Tottenham & West Ham have spent more money for less return on the pitch.

Comparing the money spent with the data from my Player Impact metric (which assigns a positive or negative value to every single on-ball action by players), then it becomes very clear how disappointing Forest’s business has been so far.

Only Tottenham & West Ham are getting a ‘worse’ return from their summer business than Forest after 21 Premier League games. To me this matches with what we’ve seen on the pitch this season - none of these 3 clubs can be happy with how their summer business has played out so far.

This shows in general you need to spend to get good returns on the pitch (no surprise!). But the big outliers here on the top left are the promoted sides who have all recruited very smartly in different ways.

Forest’s new signings have been responsible for 23.20% of the club’s total Threat Value - that ranks 10th in the league. But remember, they spent the 6th most money on these signings. It comes as no surprise that to get a higher return you need to spend significant amounts of money - but it’s interesting that teams this season generally haven’t seen an increased return once they’ve spent over £150m.

The big outliers here are the promoted teams who each in their own way have recruited pretty well during the summer. Sunderland in particular are getting a great return on their money and have enjoyed a brilliant first half of the season.

Comparing the game time of these new signings with their share of Threat Value, we can see which teams can be very happy with their summer business.

In the last of the team visuals, we can look at the share of minutes played by these new signings compared with the share of Threat Value created by those players. If a team is above the line, then their new players are making the most of their time on the field. Conversely, if they’re below the line then their new signings haven’t performed as well as hoped.

This perhaps shows how difficult it can be to successfully recruit at this level - just 7 teams are above the green line. Forest are one of the 13 who are below the line, but it’s perhaps not as low as people would think. To me this is indicative of the poor performance by the entire squad, not just those new signings who generally have been thrown in to a side in very poor form, often in different positions or roles too.

Kalimuendo’s short spell at the club meant his fee worked out as over £180,000 per Premier League minute played.

This chart explains pretty clearly why I feel it’s far too early to write the majority of Forest’s signings off. Kalimuendo, McAtee & Bakwa have played just 723 Premier League minutes between them - granted they’ve not impressed but Forest have hardly put them in a position where it was easy to do so.

Kalimuendo has obviously now departed the club. In normal circumstances I’d be pretty annoyed about this, but the fact is that the current coaching staff don’t fancy him at all and he clearly wasn’t going to play very much in the second half of the season. For that reason there was little point in keeping him here and him losing value when Forest still have to trade to survive the current financial rules. Weirdly, Forest have managed to do some good business to reportedly make a profit on him should he complete a permanent move to Frankfurt.

Hutchinson has clearly been Forest’s most successful business from the summer.

Finally, we can look at the total Threat Value by Forest’s new permanent outfield signings. It’s clearly Omari Hutchinson who has had the most successful impact since joining - and even his Forest career had a very rough start. He’s clearly talented, but also very raw - I noted back in the summer that the big thing with him would be his decision making and is work without the ball. Rarely can you question his work rate, but sometimes he’s still making some poor errors that are costing the side.

Conclusions

Out of the other signings, the one I’m most worried about is Dan Ndoye. He’s had a lot of game time (pretty evenly split on both wings), but apart from the first two games of the season we’ve seen very little from him. There was a period of time where his defensive efforts were at least making up for this lack of final third product, but even that in recent games seemed to be lacking. Hopefully this little spell out of the side with injury has given him a bit of a reset going into the second half of the campaign.

Both McAtee & Bakwa will likely struggle for gametime whilst Dyche in charge, especially after the poor first half at Wrexham. To be fair to them, again I don’t think they were put in positions to succeed. McAtee is not a deep lying midfielder, Bakwa has spent almost all of his career on the right wing but Dyche kept switching him over to the left. We’ll struggle to see the best of these players when asking them to operate in unfamiliar roles.

Jair Cunha is a player who now I hope has moved up to 3rd in the pecking order - it’s unfortunate that he isn’t in the Europa League squad but hopefully he can be one of the players who comes in (likely for Boly) for the knockout stages. Cunha has bags of potential, and even though I think he’s going to be a much better player than Omobamidele, I fear like with the Irishman we aren’t helping his career by giving him next to no time on the pitch.

Nicolo Savona for me has taken a lot of unfair stick. He’s a young player, in his first move to a new country, brought in to be a back-up and has unexpectedly been first choice for much of the season. You don’t come through Juventus’ academy and be close to Italy’s national side without being a decent player. He’s had some hairy moments for sure (as all young defenders do), but I think he’s got a lot of potential and looks very coachable. He’ll probably benefit now with a lower workload for the rest of the season, giving him a chance to refocus and look to improve further on the training pitch.

I said recently I felt like Igor Jesus has one of the most difficult jobs in football, most strikers would struggle to play when they’re as isolated as the Forest striker is in Dyche’s current system. Obviously what we want from him is to be more of a threat inside the box. For me he’s been a little unlucky (with 2 disallowed Prem goals), but we’re right to expect a little more from him in that regard. Forest need to get some reinforcements that Dyche trusts to give Igor Jesus a bit of time to rest, as he’s playing a lot of minutes at the moment.

Overall, it’s fair to say Forest’s business looks disappointing so far - but I’d just point toward the overall disappointment and upheaval of this season making it very difficult for any new signings to impress in new surroundings. Let’s face it, we’re hardly happy with a lot of the players who were here last season either are we? It’s likely that a couple of these 2025 summer signings won’t be here next season, but I’m hopeful that at least a couple of them can still come good in time, even if that isn’t until next season.