Six Nottingham Forest players whose futures are in doubt

Nottingham Forest started the process of tweaking Vitor Pereira’s squad this week with the publication of their retained list.

Four senior players will depart when their contracts officially expire at the end of the month. Goalkeepers Stefan Ortega and Angus Gunn and centre-back Willy Boly will move on as free agents while striker Lorenzo Lucca will return to parent club Napoli.

In the case of the latter, the Reds have opted not to take up an option to sign the forward permanently. Lucca made just nine appearances for the club after joining on loan for the second half of the season. When head coach Pereira named two keepers on the bench and omitted the Italian from his match squad in the penultimate game of the campaign, it confirmed the writing was on the wall.

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The quartet will not be the only ones to bid farewell to the City Ground this summer. Pereira’s squad does not require too much work but there will still be some ins and outs in the coming weeks and months.

Premier League clubs can start doing business again on Monday (June 15) and will have until 11pm on September 1 to get deals done. For Forest, there will be much focus on potential arrivals to help with a push for the European spots.

But who could head in the opposite direction? The Nottingham Post runs the rule over some of the players with question marks against their futures Trentside…

Let’s start with the obvious one. As much as Pereira and the Reds would love to keep him, there appears a growing inevitability about the midfielder heading to the Etihad Stadium.

Owner Evangelos Marinakis will stand his ground in the negotiating stakes, though, and ensure any deal is on Forest’s terms. If Manchester City are to sign the 23-year-old they will have to pay top dollar to do so.

A second bid from City worth more than £120 million was batted away earlier this week. There has been talk of a £130m price tag having been placed on Anderson’s head.

Atalanta have been eyeing up the full-back for some time and it seems likely he will move on barely 12 months after his arrival from Juventus. Word from Italy is there is a belief a deal will get done.

If the Reds can get back something close to the £13m or so they spent on the Italian, it would be considered decent business. A knee injury ended Savona’s season prematurely after 20 appearances in the Garibaldi.

Something of a surprise inclusion on the club’s list of retained players. The left-back penned a four-year deal when he signed from Bayern Munich in the summer of 2022.

He should, therefore, have been a free agent this summer. Instead, he remains under contract amid an apparent extension that was not made public.

Does it mean a first appearance for Forest might finally be on the cards for the 28-year-old after injury misfortune and a number of loans? It feels unlikely, even if Pereira does take a look at him during pre-season.

As in the case of Richards, the defender is yet to make a competitive appearance for the club he joined two years ago. He spent the past year on loan at Real Oviedo and will almost certainly be on the move again - whether that be permanently or on another loan deal.

A return to Olympiacos is said to be a possibility, after two previous stints in Greece. Last month, there was talk of the fellow Marinakis-owned outfit weighing up the prospect of bringing him back.

Carmo, it was claimed, was keen on the idea. He also has admirers in La Liga.

Had last summer worked out differently, the winger could be a Sporting Lisbon player by now. A loan deal with a reported £13m option to buy had been agreed, only for the move to collapse due to an administrative error as the window closed.

Jota went to Besiktas instead but they have not taken up the option to sign him permanently. Forest made strengthening out wide a priority last summer so have Callum Hudson-Odoi, Dilane Bakwa, Omari Hutchinson and Dan Ndoye on the books while Morgan Gibbs-White played on the left in the final weeks of the season.

It would probably take some doing for Jota to force his way into Pereira’s thinking. If he wants to play regularly, a switch elsewhere is the best bet.

Price is the sticking point for Eintracht Frankfurt when it comes to snapping up the front man permanently. The German outfit had a £23m purchase option in the loan deal Kalimuendo signed in January but they now consider that too expensive.

Their goal is to bring that fee down, amid suggestions they are unable to spend more than £17m on a total package for the player. Talks have taken place between the two clubs in an effort to find a compromise.

Kalimuendo cost Forest £26m when they recruited him from Rennes last summer. It remains to be seen how much leeway they are prepared to give in negotiations with Eintracht Frankfurt.