Nottingham Forest looked to have hit the jackpot when they parted with around £4 million to sign Odysseas Vlachodimos in the summer of 2023.
The Reds landed a custodian with an abundance of experience and someone who had bundles of game time in the Champions League and other European competitions.
Benfica were the selling club and perhaps surprisingly they had been willing to let him join Forest for such a relatively small transfer fee.
Vlachodimos just didn’t work out at Forest though. He made only seven appearances for the club, keeping one clean sheet against Aston Villa in the Premier League.
He conceded 16 goals from seven outings and after a 5-0 defeat to Fulham, he was displaced in the team by Matt Turner.
Nuno Espirito Santo wasn’t overly impressed either, choosing to play him in the FA Cup only and it was no surprise when the club sold him in the summer.
Newcastle were the club that parted with £20 million to sign the Greece number one as the the Magpies and Forest did some financial gymnastics to ensure PSR requirements were met.
Odysseas Vlachodimos makes surprise Newcastle debut
Even though he only arrived at Newcastle in the summer, some reports claimed that the club might be willing to loan him straight out to another club.
However, he ended up staying at St James’ Park and last night he was summonsed from the bench at half-time in the Carabao Cup against AFC Wimbledon.
Newcastle won the game 1-0 and although Vlachodimos had very little to do, he did earn rave reviews for one aspect of his game.
The Newcastle Gazette gave him a standard 6/10 and claimed: “A surprise debut following Dubravka’s injury and claimed crosses with ease.”
Newcastle World opted for a rating of 7/10 and stated: “A surprise debut. Reliable when called upon. Distributed the ball well.”
Vlachodimos will now watch with intrigue as Martin Dubravka is assessed and if he’s going to be out for some time, Vlachodimos could be the understudy to Nick Pope.
Forest did amazingly well to sell Vlachodimos
To be truthful, it’s probably no surprise that the powers that be are likely to investigate the deal between Forest, Newcastle and Vlachodimos.
A fee of £20 million doesn’t make a deal of sense, particularly as he hardly played for Forest and even being the number one Greece goalkeeper shouldn’t bump things up that much.
Still, all the clubs are at it and Everton and Newcastle did some similar deals this summer to ensure that PSR criteria were met.
Vlachodimos didn’t cover himself in glory at Forest and in truth, he didn’t really get a proper run of games in the Premier League to get going.
Still, he looked short of the required standard at the time and Forest have moved on from a rather painful episode on the club’s recent history.
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