Juventus have already given Nottingham Forest a hint about Douglas Luiz’s new best position

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Nottingham Forest are edging ever closer to signing Douglas Luiz, who recently starred for Juventus in a slightly different role than expected.

Forest have been in advanced talks with Luiz for what has felt like the entire summer, with the Brazilian midfielder now looking close to arriving at the City Ground.

Despite the differences between Juventus’ and Forest’s valuation of Luiz, the clubs look to be close to an agreement that will finally bring the saga to a close.

In the meantime, though, Luiz has been featuring for the Italian giants in pre-season, where boss Igor Tudor may have actually given Nuno Espírito Santo an idea as to how best to utilise the former Aston Villa man.

Igor Tudor showed Nottingham Forest where to play Douglas Luiz

Luiz skipped Juventus training in July in what looked like the end of his Italian journey, but he has continued to feature under Tudor in pre-season.

In a more recent fixture, Juventus played their ‘next-gen’ team in an annual friendly, in which the Brazilian started behind the striker in a 3-4-2-1.

After 15 minutes, Filip Kostic crossed in for Luiz to head home Juventus’ opening goal, scoring his first goal in the black and white.

Clearly, Luiz has goal-scoring potential, considering he scored ten in his final season at Aston Villa, but he has naturally played deeper in his career. However, this role behind the striker could well be more efficient for him.

It’ll certainly be an interesting proposition for Espírito Santo, but Sunday’s win over Brentford has made swapping out the midfield a hard task.

Douglas Luiz will have to fight for a place at Nottingham Forest

The midfield against Brentford was perfectly balanced. Forest fans raved about Elliot Anderson’s display while next to him, Ibrahim Sangare helped Forest control the midfield.

The trio was completed by the remarkable performance of Morgan Gibbs-White, who, aside from scoring a goal of his own, produced a perfect attacking midfield display.

Gibbs-White created the most chances in the game, including setting up Dan Ndoye’s debut goal, as well as generally advancing the play with his passes into the final third and progressive dribbles.

An argument can be made for Luiz to start in any of the midfield roles featured on Sunday, but equally, the cohesion shown between Sangare, Anderson and Gibbs-White will make it hard for Espírito Santo to break up that unit.