“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nottingham Forest can pretend not to have heard.
The offer from Manchester United for Ousmane Diomande was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“I did not go to Harrogate Town to sit and watch. I want to come back to Nottingham Forest and fight for my place.” 1 appearances in 24 matches say the rest.
The dugout25 Jan 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑4 defeat, delivered by Joshua Smith to a room that had heard them before.
Successful dribbles: 25. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Nottingham Forest can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ousmane Diomande was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I did not go to Harrogate Town to sit and watch. I want to come back to Nottingham Forest and fight for my place.” 1 appearances in 20 matches say the rest.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Nottingham Forest has to find a result from somewhere.
Morgan Gibbs-White was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jayden Powell is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nicolás Domínguez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 86th, and Tottenham spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Jair had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Igor Jesus was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.71. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Igor Jesus. 3‑1 against Tottenham, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Nottingham Forest, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nottingham Forest this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.