After selling Anthony Elanga to Newcastle United, nobody expected Nottingham Forest to sell another star player — but Morgan Gibbs-White looks likely to depart for Tottenham Hotspur. How did it all come to this? And what happens next?
A recurring theme in Adam Curtis’s BBC documentaries is the stories people tell themselves — and the stories they tell others — to help understand the chaos surrounding us. How you define and simplify a world that doesn’t always bend to your will; the need to explain things beyond your control.
It became very clear last Friday that the story Nottingham Forest had been telling themselves — and the story Morgan Gibbs-White (or, at least, his agent) had been telling himself — were completely at odds.
Selling one of our key players was, if not inevitable, desirable in a world where clubs have to balance the books to avoid the very PSR punishment that left us reeling. The fact that Manchester City’s interest in Gibbs-White seemed to have waned meant Anthony Elanga’s £52m (or is it £55m?) move to Newcastle United was a profitable, if not ideal, start to the transfer window.
Presumably the story the club was telling itself was that one major sale this summer meant they could focus on new players and retaining existing ones. Whether Elanga pushed for a move or not, it suited both parties. And having secured new contracts for Nuno, Neco Williams and Ola Aina, Gibbs-White would surely be next?
The player (or his agent) it seems had other plans. The fact that a confidential release clause of just £60m was revealed on Thursday, with a medical planned for Friday, is where the real fury has emerged. And where the legal action starts. Did Tottenham Hotspur make an unlawful approach?
If the initial transfer fee of £25m had not risen substantially — to the point where it is now presumably close to £42.5m — then that release clause doesn’t sound so daft. And perhaps it’s understandable that Gibbs-White wanted to wait until the summer to talk contracts — given that we’d just battled relegation last summer for a second season — to see where the club would be (which wasn’t clear up until the final day) and what his and our future might be.
This is all reasonable, except the club’s story now is that he’s refused for 12 months to even discuss talks about ‘a big pay rise and removal of the buy-out’. To his credit, he’s turned up for pre-season training and presumably will carry on until there is some kind of resolution — but it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
If there was no chance of a new contract, then it makes complete sense to sell him this summer — with just two years left on the contract, the value is only going to decrease. Quite how either side let it come to this is a mystery. But with the new season kicking off in just over a month, then either a sale or a new contract needs to happen soon.
How do you replace MGW?
Of course, nobody thought this was going to be easy. It’s not like Nottingham Forest have a history of being straightforward. If we were living in a world where things went our way, then we’d have beaten Leicester and Chelsea and would now be eyeing up Real Madrid and Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
If we could offer that to current and new players then we probably wouldn’t be in the position we are now — but the chance to double your salary and play in the Champions League is a tempting proposition in what is, in reality, a short career. Until we can command the revenues of a top six club then our wings will occasionally be clipped.
But what next? How do you replace the beating heart of this team. The talisman who has been intrinsic to our style of play since promotion three years ago. The best player anyone’s seen on Trentside this century.
No wonder people are angry. How do you deal with the hurt and the anger and the pain?
It’s easy to say ‘trust the process’. That the recruitment team have done it before, and they’ll do it again. Players leave and that’s part of life, it’s our (current) place in the food chain. It’s easy to say that because it’s true. It doesn’t make it any easier though.
Maybe, in this case, it’s not about profit. Maybe it’s about having a supremely gifted player who fought as hard as anyone to see off relegation for two seasons in a row and then lifted us to the brink of the Champions League. Maybe it was worth it to experience the glory of that skill and vision. Maybe not.
Given that one of the questions for the new season was ‘how do we evolve?’, then maybe this advances the evolution. Do we move from a counterattacking 4-2-3-1 to a more possession-based system? What do we do when opposition teams gift us the ball? How do we break them down? How do we score goals, without two of our best players, is a new conundrum.
Gibbs-White is very much a number 10 and while Steve Cooper’s efforts to move to a 4-3-3 set-up didn’t work, the midfield options Nuno has now might lend itself to this development. And we’ve seen how quickly Eliott Anderson has blossomed under the manager’s tutelage.
Having been linked to numerous players this summer, we wait to see if the likes of Jacob Ramsey, James McAtee, Yoane Wissa and/or Harvey Elliott can help build on the success of last season.
Evangelos Marinakis, of course, will not settle for anything less than progress. His ambition is our ambition. And promotion to the Europa League — entirely another chapter — opens new doors.
But while the confusion reigns, it’s about which story you tell yourself. Is it a disaster? Will things turn out for the better? Can we improve on last season? Nobody knows these answers but the opportunity for the club now is to shape the narrative and decide the story it wants to tell — hopefully without being caught off-guard.
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