Nuno Espirito Santo must heed Brian Clough’s key transfer policy ahead of a big summer at Nottingham Forest

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As an excellent Premier League campaign draws to a close, Nuno Espirito Santo and Nottingham Forest face a huge summer.

With European football of some kind almost secured for next season, the Reds’ first-team squad will need strengthening to compete with the extra demands.

There will likely be significant departures as well, Morgan Gibbs-White strongly linked with Manchester City and Callum Hudson-Odoi admired by Serie A clubs, among others.

It is here that Espirito Santo can draw lessons from Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, the Nottingham Forest legends having a key transfer policy that should be followed by the current manager.

Brian Clough’s key transfer policy – ‘Be as eager to sell good players as to buy them’

As detailed in Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s book Soccernomics: Why European men and American women win and billionaire owners are destined to lose, Clough and Taylor had three policies that underpinned Forest’s transfer business.

The first and most important of these was to ‘be as eager to sell good players as to buy them.’

Kuper and Szymanski explain: ‘Each time Clough and Taylor signed a player, they would give him a set speech, which Taylor records in his book [With Clough, by Taylor]: “Son, the first time we can replace you with a better player, we’ll do it without blinking an eyelid.

‘“That’s what we’re paid to do, to produce the best side and to win as many things as we can.”’

Taylor expands in his book, adding: ‘It’s as important in soccer as in the stock market to sell at the right time. A manager should always be looking for signs of disintegration in winning a side and then sell the players responsible before their deterioration is noticed by possible buyers.’

While the current Nottingham Forest side is not yet showing signs of disintegration (despite the recent blip in form), should significant offers come in for some of their best players, they should not necessarily be rejected.

Indeed, while unwilling to sell him, the club may be open to parting ways with Gibbs-White providing a huge profit can be generated.

If significant amounts of money can be generated in transfer fees, that money can then be reinvested wisely in Espirito Santo’s squad to make it even stronger and ensure the current campaign is not a one-off.

Brian Clough and Peter Taylor’s best transfer deals at Nottingham Forest

Nottingham Forest’s unprecedented period of success under Clough and Taylor was, in large part, thanks to the excellent squad the two built at the City Ground.

Masters of the transfer market, some of the pair’s best deals are outlined by Kuper and Szymanski as follows:

• Buying forward Garry Birtles from the non-league club Long Eaton for $3,500 in 1976 and selling him to Manchester United four years later for $2.9 million. Birtles was then sold back to Forest for a quarter of the initial fee in 1982; he won the European Cup with Forest in 1979 and 1980 prior to moving to Old Trafford.
• Buying Roy Keane for $80,000 in 1990 from Irish club Cobh Ramblers and selling him to Manchester United in 1993 for $5.6 million.
• Buying Kenny Burns from Birmingham City for $250,000 in 1977. Burns would go on to be voted First Division player of the year by English journalists.
• Buying Archie Gemmill from Derby in 1977 (where Clough had first bought the Scotland international in 1970) for $35,000 and goalkeeper John Middleton. Gemmill would go on to win the league, League Cup, and European Cup at the club.

Espirito Santo and the Nottingham Forest board can therefore learn a lot from the club’s greatest ever manager, and should be open to accepting big money for some of their stars if it is offered.