Double Departure

As we previously said on 24-7 Khaled al-Rashidi has left the club. We said a few weeks ago, taken from tweets from Kuwait that said as much that seemed to fly under many radars.
It'll be no loss to Forest, al-Rashidi never played a game and never sounded like he was going to break through, and the news he has left is no surprise.

Another none surprise is that Nathanial Chalobah has returned to Chelsea after his loan period with the club. His time with the club was somewhat mixed. He started slowly and poorly. He soon started putting in some better performances, but the damage was kind of done. Chalobah seemed to be somewhat indifferent to performing to a high level, which is a problem with young loanee's.

Chalobah might well reappear on loan in the Championship quickly, and will be looking to make quick moves to cement a holding midfielder, though Guy Moussi has returned. "Nate" did grab a couple of goals. al-Rashidi never achieved anything..

al-Rashidi Leaving in January

It’s been barely reported save for a few tweets from Middle Eastern based fans, but it looks like the Kuwaiti player experiment is over, putting to bed once and for all the insane garble from the likes of the Daily Mail.

Based on his tweets, and a few dodgy translates it looks roughly like he can’t finalise anything yet or formally announce but other tweeters have, that the Kuwaiti keeper will be going to Al Salmiya for around £500k.

Al-Rashidi hasn’t played for Forest and t be honest never looked like he would. More of a token signing for the Reds, he has always been down the pecking order, and when de Vries arrived in the summer to take the back up spot, he looked even more unlikely to figure.

It looks like he will remain with the club till the January window and then depart. As I say there is formal announcement by the club as yet. The supposed £500k will be nice though.

I’d say it’s a shame but I’d have no idea if it is or not...

al-Rashidi Signs, But Some Aren't Happy

I would very much like to start this piece by reinforcing my support of the al-Hasawi regime. I am firmly behind what they are trying to do, and without them.... well that doesn’t bare thinking about.

And yet some of our supporters are just never happy. I am have repeatedly called for fans to have patience. Today for me seems to be s turning point in some regards. Perhaps for the worse.

Khalid al Rashidi has been granted his work permit and as such is signing for Forest. This is a keeper we know little about, but has international experience and spent time on trial in he summer with Reds. But the way some fans have reacted to the tweeted news was as if we were signing a 12 year kid who has never seen a ball never mind played in net.

I have just read a tweet that read “when can we sign some good real players, rather than loans and your Kuwaiti mates.” This last week would have been targeted at Fawaz of course who has announced he is scaling back from Twitter. 2 years ago we had a chairman on Twitter. He too was forced to scale back and remove himself from there. Which led to a reduction of financial support before Nigel Doughty’s untimely death.

Now we have a similar situation where after begging for more interaction and information from board level, when what we do get we don’t like, a minority, but a very vocal minority immediately feel the need to illustrate their feelings. Varying from just a moan, to directing their tweet at either the player or board member or relatives in relation to their gripe.

The news that Fawaz won’t be as active on Twitter is a great shame. It’s been pleasant hearing the news first hand of signings and his excitement. Now because for some fans what they hear isn’t good enough its forced him to come away. The problem is with this vocal minority is that they will see this a weakness and a lack of willingness to connect with them. Not the actual truth that's there little or no point connecting with people who are never happy with what you do.

This club may well not exist with Fawaz, and if it did it wouldn’t be in the position we are. But fans want the moon on a stick. We make a signing, they wanted one who was better. We sign a potential rough diamond, they wanted a polished diamond. The problem is, and I’m going to say it, these people are basically stupid. They don’t understand bigger pictures. They see things as black and white and incredibly simple. Why sign this player when we could have that player, without even thinking is it possible, would they come, what the wage situation is, would they fit in systems, would they upset morale.

A lot of people seem to question why trade in camp for an untried entity. Well Camp wasn’t going to sign a new deal, he wanted to be off. Get used to that. So for that reason he was jettisoned from the club. Simply put, McLeish seems to run the club along the lines of if you don’t want to be here, then get gone. And I support that mentality. I think for too long we have had players treating us another stop on their career and not somewhere to build and make something, for lack of a better cliché, beautiful.

Basically who are we to argue if they people bankrolling us want to bring some Kuwaiti players along for the ride. If it starts to hamper us then and only then can you really grumble. But this guy hasn’t even signed. Who the hell are you to question it? What do you know about al-Rashidi that makes you so certain he will fail? It’s like no-one has ever come from a league that hasn’t produced a star before. Look around, the game is global, this will happen that players come from places that were previously footballing back waters.

Fawaz powering in an effort at the Trent End

Back to the al-Hasawis, increasingly I see people openly question them. People bemoaning the number of loans and no permanent signings. Well again, that's the nature of the beat I’m afraid. We are in flux, attempting to try and build from essentially nothing. Futhermore in flux because we're trying to get promoted and don’t want to be saddlled with Championship players in the Premier League. Furthermore it’s a means to an end. These players we want and need might not be available for a permanent deal in January. Clubs don;t want to sell in January because it's harder to replace and often more expensive. There's an old adage that you can;t get value in the January window and often that is true. So to complain we have too many loans is short sighted and looking for any reason to moan.And thats all people seem to want to do

Transfer Gossip - August 21

With the news after the game on Saturday that up to 3 players could come in and specifically a right winger, there have been a few names bandied about, mostly the same names, which tends to suggests there is credence to these rumours.
Here is a summary of where we are at in terms of gossip, rumour and guesswork, as always taken from around the net, and looked at entirely subjectively and ridiculed where fit.

In

The Kuwaiti’s
The long, ever running saga of work permits for Khalid al-Rashidi and Bader al-Motawa rumbles on. There is strong rumour that tomorrow is the big day we find out what’s happening. We shall see.

Adam Hammill
The Wolves winger is up for sale, and is the perfect fit for the fact we want a creative winger, coupled with Championship experience, and the fact we have expressed interest before it seems the perfect fit for the Reds. It is widely spread on the likes of Twitter, and people are expecting the now customary Fawaz tweet to announce the deal.

Thomas Ince
Whilst also being linked with Hammill, we were briefly also linked with Thomas Ince, a rumour the ever unreliable Paul Taylor suggested seemed unlikely, saying neither club had been in touch regards the deal, as far he knows anyway. He also knew that the Kuwaiti’s weren’t buying Forest. Suggests he doesn’t know a lot. Anyway, he would be an amazing acquisition, for me he is a very exciting winger good on either foot.

Morgan Ferrier
Never heard of him till checking Newsnow earlier, but he’s a 17 year old previously released by Arsenal, and now Watford and up for grabs. O’Driscoll has him briefly on trial at Crawley and has kept tabs on him, and appears to want to add him to our youth policy. Can’t hurt I guess, but I know as much as I have just written about him.


Out

David McGoldrick
Coventry have been linked for a move, whether it is loan or permanent depending on source. I’d say loan more likely as they are unlikely to want to saddle a potentially expensive player to a long term deal. Perhaps they have merely sounded us out on the possibility. We do have a glut of strikers, and IF Bader signs he would be a similar player, maybe that’s what we’re waiting for. McGoldrick simply hasn’t worked out here and perhaps it’s best he move on.

Radoslaw Majewski
Always seemingly linked with fringe Premiership clubs but with no real evidence or source, Majewski has now been linked with West Brom and Reading in recent weeks. A Fee of £1.5m as bandied around as likely, which sounds fair enough, more fair than the insane £4-5mill some people think he’s worth. I’ll never understand the people who worship him, yeah’ he’s handy but some make him out to be a world beater.

Matt Derbyshire
Unfortunately, no news here. Keep praying folks.

Transfer Gossip & Rumour

OK, so here’s a roundup of the names doing the rounds on the likes of Twitter. I am not saying any of these deals are definite, merely rounding up in a bite size manner what’s happening or how likely these could well be and what they would mean for the side.

Khalid al-Rashidi
Apparently Ali al-Habsi at Wigan, who is a handy keeper rates him as the best keeper in Asia, and the Kuwaiti keeper is a done deal pending a work permit, which isn’t exactly a foregone conclusion. I can assume he’d be back up to Camp, as Smith is now gone, without seeing any action of him I don’t know if he’d be anything like first choice just yet. Where this puts Karl Darlow I am unsure, after his squad number was revealed as 12 I thought it might mean his chances are greater, but maybe the intention is again to loan him out for experience after his stint in Wales with Newport County. Al-Rashidi requires to have played 75% of international games for Kuwait to qualify, however Kuwait is fairly lowly ranked and to qualify you usually need to be top 75 I believe. Special dispensations are however made, so let’s see.

Frank Moussa
Again less rumour more fact, as he is on trial and has been playing games. As I tweeted, the possibility of a midfield of Moussa and Moussi means we could be cheering "MOOOOOUSSS” more often. We don’t exactly have a dearth of central midfielders, so what this means for some of the other guys I would be unsure, he is young, 22 years old and was released by Leicester, after a previous spell with Southend.

Tomas Diaz Navarette
His current club is Belgian Third Division side R.U. Saint-Gilloise, but he spent the least season on loan in Hungary with Honved. He is 20 years old and had trials at Man City, and that is as much as I know apart from him being a defender. A quick Google and it seems he may have a mixed ownership issue, which is heavily frowned upon in the English game but is hugely popular with South Americans. Now you don’t get a newspaper reporting your on trial with City if your rubbish, so there must be an element of ability and it seems he is after bigger moves, maybe moving moved by a third party ownership to Belgium for passport reasons (as they have quicker naturalisation rules as any Football Manager player knows) And whilst contracted there his owners try and find a better club. Who knows though to be honest, it’s not even clear this guy is the Chilean trial list, but more and educated guess.

Ismael Bouzid
French born Algerian international Bouzid is a free agent being linked with the club. He’s travelled the world somewhat in his career, and after impressing as a youngster and being linked with Sunderland, Galatasary and Kaiserslautern, who ended up at Hearts in Scotland. After two years there he was released, and after Crawley Town passed him over he ended up in the Greek super League with a club I have never heard of PAS Giannina F.C, after apparently turning down a host of better clubs. Like George Boateng he seems to have a year in Greece and wants to come back over to Britain. This might be a cheap back up option for any other centre halves we bring in, doesn’t sound top quality, and to be honest do we want Lascelles down the pecking order further?

Simon Gillett
I guess one of the host of ex Doncaster players O’Driscoll managed will always be linked and here is another, the midfielder Gillett. He started at Southampton and after numerous loan spells elsewhere was released and ended up with Doncaster. Again another midfielder linked when we already have a host, and might be simply lazy linking ex Donny players but his name was going round Twitter earlier.

Michael Owen
The rumour that won’t die and seems to be reignited by Natalie Jackson’s brother. To be fair he would be great at this level, he’s been at top top clubs, but he has said already he has no intention of dropping to the Championship, so it’s highly unlikely. He is also strongly being linked with a move to Turkey (Trabzonspor) so it appears highly unlikely.