Nottingham Forest make official second bid to sign international attacker, £34m price tag revealed

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Nottingham Forest are certainly serious about making major improvements to their attack this summer, with bids made for an internationally-capped target.

Nottingham Forest are preparing to spend big in the summer to maintain the momentum of Nuno Espirito Santo’s first full season at the club, which looks set to deliver European football.

Despite the discrepancies between UEFA competition prize money, Forest’s transfer plans won’t be halted if Champions League football isn’t secured, with budgets in place for all outcomes.

A significant portion of the budget will be dedicated to adding more goals to the Forest squad, with bids already placed on a 12-goal attacker.

Nottingham Forest launch bids for Baris Yilmaz

Forest have been keen on Baris Yilmaz for quite some time now, with interest first reported in January for the Turkish international who starred at the 2024 European Championship.

More recently, Yilmaz has indicated he’d be keen to move, which must’ve encouraged Forest as according to Etran Suzgun of the Turkish news outlet GS Gazete, Evangelos Marinakis has approached Galatasaray with an offer.

Suzgun said: “There are serious suitors for Barış Alper from the Premier League. He is strong, physically fit. His one-on-one fights are successful. He is the player of that area. He also did well with the Turkish National Team.

“When Nottingham Forest made an offer of 25+5 million Euros, Chairman Dursun Özbek said, ‘If I give Barış away, I can’t explain this to the fans, we are going to the championship.’

 “If an offer of 40 million [Euros] is received, Barış can be sold. There was already an offer of 30 million Euros, it was rejected.”

Forest are certainly getting closer to the £34m price tag set by the Turkish giants, with the latest reported offer at just over £25m.

The Reds’ other option as a wide forward looks to be Bryan Mbeumo who may score more goals than Yilmaz, but is outshone by the Turkish star in a unique area.

Baris Yilmaz has a unique ability that Bryan Mbeumo can’t match

Brentford are expecting to sell Mbeumo so a deal is there to be done for the Cameroonian, but perhaps there is better value in a move for Yilmaz.

Mbeumo’s goals and assists clearly show his value over Yilmaz but in the underlying numbers, the pair are very similar, with the Brentford man creating more but Yilmaz having a better dribbling success rate.

However, one area that Yilmaz bizarrely dominates is in his aerial ability, winning 2.58 aerial duels per 90. This puts him in the top 1% of wingers aerially in Europe, an intriguing prospect given that Chris Wood also enjoys crosses into the box.

Should Marinakis prefer a move for Yilmaz, then, the Forest squad would unlock an aerial prowess that could prove an unexpected but deadly addition to the attack.