Nottingham Forest could emulate Newcastle with stunning record or rule-breaking January transfer plans

Matt Stead
Wolves forward Matheus Cunha, Newcastle player Anthony Gordon and Brentford striker Yoane Wissa
Nottingham Forest have big d*ck transfer energy and it's great

Nottingham Forest are throwing their weight around with plans for signings which were previously unrealistic. Either break transfer records or all the rules.

Forest are taking advantage of an unexpectedly brilliant season to try and reinforce a push for Champions League qualification by signing players either previously unavailable to them, or from teams who were recently in and around them in the table. And listen, fair play. It’s been done before to varying degrees of success.

 

Newcastle sign Anthony Gordon in 2023
It was an artificial appendage enlargement which accelerated Newcastle’s rise from relegation battlers to Champions League challengers within a season but few could argue it wasn’t ludicrously effective.

Having buttressed their battle to stave off the Championship in January 2022 by raiding Burnley and Brighton – both of whom started the month higher than the Magpies in the Premier League table – for Chris Wood and Dan Burn, Newcastle decided an Everton player previously unavailable to them was key to their future a year later.

Gordon himself called it “a really big step” in his career but Everton were not far from Newcastle the previous season and had beaten them at Goodison 10 months before.

While their trajectories seemed diametrically opposed and it felt as though Gordon was jumping from a sinking ship to a rocket, the Magpies still took advantage of their position to big-time a side they had finished below two seasons before by first unsettling and then signing one of their best players.

 

Stoke sign Giannelli Imbula in 2016
The biggest signings of the 2025 January transfer window so far
 involve Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, because sometimes a red sock gets in the sportswashing and when panic ensues, the only solution is to throw money at it.

It was a slightly different story in 2016, when the most expensive transfer of the month across the entire globe was made by Mark Hughes and Stoke.

The Potters were among a group of clubs within touching distance of Champions League qualification and sensed their moment, breaking a club record to spend £18.1m on Porto midfielder Imbula while the teams around them largely held their nerve. Even surprise title challengers Leicester only brought in Daniel Amartey and Demarai Gray.

“If he is as good as we think he is, he’ll keep his value,” said Stoke chairman Peter Coates of Imbula, who had his contract terminated 18 months early after 28 appearances and three loans in four years.

 

Sunderland sign Stephane Sessegnon and Sulley Muntari in 2011
Steve Bruce said himself that “if you had said to me six months ago that we would be looking at Sulley Muntari, who had just won the Champions League, I would have said, ‘not a chance’.” But the Ghanaian was rocking up for his second bite at the Premier League cherry on a brief loan from Inter.

He joined on the same day as Sessegnon, finally captured in a £6m deal after internal wranglings at PSG. Sunderland, sixth and only a handful of points behind both Chelsea and Spurs when the transfer window opened, had given themselves the best possible chance of a strong finish to the season.

The Black Cats then lost eight of nine games from February onwards and drew the other because they are a fundamentally cursed institution who cannot have nice things. When does Jobe Bellingham’s contract run until again?

 

Portsmouth sign Jermain Defoe in 2008
“If he was under contract at Tottenham, he can’t be talking to me. I could be called up before the FA over this,” said Harry Redknapp, who admitted 16 years after bringing Defoe to Portsmouth to “breaking all the rules” in contacting and then signing him.

“I don’t think there is any transfer that has ever been done in the history of transfers where the manager or somebody at the football club hasn’t spoken to the player or the agent before the deal’s done. There is always someone speaking to the player or speaking to the agent before you ever meet officially. Of course it happens. It has happened forever,” Redknapp responded last year when put to him that he perhaps shouldn’t have spoken to the striker without Tottenham’s express permission.

As excuses go, it’s up there with “I can’t work a computer, I don’t know what an email is, I have never sent a fax and I’ve never even sent a text message.”

It was a deal rife with controversy and still under some element of FA investigation as recently as 2023 over suggestions an unlicensed agent was heavily involved in negotiations. Pompey even initially announced it as a loan before declaring it to be a permanent £9.5m deal.

And there was obviously no medical because, in Defoe’s words, Redknapp “knew me from a kid” at West Ham.

But the nuts and bolts were that Portsmouth, in the middle of their fifth consecutive Premier League season and three points behind fourth-placed Liverpool, recognised the deadline day opportunity and picked Defoe up off the bench of a Spurs side below them in the table but far higher in terms of reputation and potential.

The England international scored 17 goals in 36 games before Spurs, now with Redknapp as manager, signed him back within a year. It’s best not to ask questions about how that went down.

 

Everton sign James Beattie in 2005
David Moyes once said his Everton side were “probably a centre-forward away” from competing for the Premier League title and he cannot be faulted for trying to rectify that defect.

Yakubu, Andy Johnson and Nikica Jelavic were all trialled as the answer but not before Beattie became their club-record signing halfway through their first sustained tilt at Champions League qualification.

Everton were keeping pace with the established elite in January 2005, staying ahead of Liverpool and behind only Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United. But theirs was a small squad in dire need of rotational options and the loan of Mikel Arteta from Real Sociedad undoubtedly helped.

Both deals were only made possible by Everton’s lofty position but Beattie was the club-record statement signing. While Southampton were fighting relegation they had frequently finished above the Toffees in recent seasons and even when they slipped behind, the gap between the two clubs was negligible. When Everton were narrowly avoiding relegation in 2003/04, Saints were comfortable in mid-table and had played – albeit briefly – in Europe with Beattie as their top scorer.

A shudderingly early red card on his fifth Everton appearance in a defeat to Chelsea set things off on a difficult course with Moyes from which things never fully recovered but Beattie did contribute to pushing the Toffees over the Champions League qualification line, even managing not to have his goal in the play-off against Villarreal randomly ruled out by Pierluigi Collina.

 

Aston Villa sign Dion Dublin in 1998
This is the good stuff. If in doubt, fall back on the ’90s.

“We still intend to pursue this matter most rigorously. We are not happy with the aspects of it at all, and there are still a few more miles to run in this matter,” said furious Coventry chairman Bryan Richardson when his plan to put wantaway club captain Dublin under the hammer quickly backfired.

The Sky Blues had considered Blackburn’s £6.75m offer, well above the reported £5m release clause in Dublin’s contract, to be a “closed bid” and refused to countenance interest from any other clubs. But Aston Villa and Newcastle rather understandably stuck to the terms of the Dube’s deal and put less on the table, albeit enough to allow them to talk to the striker.

Richardson lamented that “rules and regulations had been broken” but would not have had a leg to stand on in court, despite later claiming Dublin had “refused” to play a cup game against Luton when the move was nearing completion.

John Gregory was thrilled. Aston Villa had already “surprised a few people, including ourselves” by topping the Premier League table – they finished only five points above a mid-table Coventry side fuelled by Golden Boot-sharer Dublin a year before – and the manager felt “we now have a squad capable of challenging any team for honours”.

They finished sixth and were knocked out early in the FA, League and UEFA Cups.

MORE ON NOTTINGHAM FOREST’S TRANSFER PLANS FROM F365
👉 Nottingham Forest ‘submit bid’ for 12-goal Premier League striker wanted by Arsenal
👉 Nottingham Forest make Arteta’s ‘big wish’ their ‘primary target’ for January