Nottingham Forest added 12 new players to their squad during the summer transfer window, with several players departing the City Ground to offset the arrivals.
The Reds boss Sabri Lamouchi spent the summer reshaping his squad and he did well not to lose any major players from his group. One man who did leave, however, was Hillal Soudani who departed for Olympiacos after just one season on Trentside.
His solitary season in English football proved troublesome for the 31-year-old but it certainly wasn’t through any fault of his own.
After arriving from Dinamo Zagreb for £2.7 million (Nottinghamshire Live), he played eight games in all competitions and scored two goals for the Reds.
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His notches for Forest were important goals too. He secured all three points with the only goal of the game against Reading and then followed it up with an equalising goal against Wigan.
Soudani showed during his rare appearances for the Reds that he had the attributes to produce the goods if he was handed an opportunity to shine.
Those chances to play in the team were infrequent and a knee injury curtailed his season in October. He wouldn’t recover in time to play again during 2018/19 and was duly offloaded to Greece.
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There is enough evidence to suggest that Forest should have perhaps persisted with him a little while longer.
Although Sabri Lamouchi now has a plethora of talent to choose from, one area that he is still short in is up front.
Lack of options
Lewis Grabban is the primary striker with the unproven Rafa Mir as the current option from the bench. Tyler Walker was allowed to leave on loan and should anything happen to Grabban, Forest have a real problem.
Where Mir has struggled to have an impact is slotting into the style of football that Lamouchi typically likes to play.
Soudani is similar to Grabban in terms of style and he could have proved an ideal option from the bench during this season.
The man with 49 caps and 22 goals to his name for Algeria is certainly keen to prove his worth to his new employers. In four games for Olympiacos, he has netted two goals; one against Volos and the other against PAS Lamia.
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Soudani didn’t really look capable of ousting Grabban from the team on a regular basis but he would have added another element of quality in reserve.
There is an argument that Soudani might have found his level in the less demanding Greek league. That won’t stop some Forest supporters wondering whether or not the forward should have been given another season to try and impress at the City Ground, however.