Nottingham Forest in race to land £30m star on loan

It’s a massively exciting time to be a Nottingham Forest fan at the moment.

Nuno Espírito Santo has transformed a side that looked destined for relegation scrap after relegation scrap into a top Premier League side, one that’ll be playing in the Europa League this season.

While there are stars all across the team, from Matz Sels between the sticks to Chris Wood up top, the star of the team is undoubtedly Morgan Gibbs-White.

The England international is often at the heart of everything the Tricky Trees do in attack, so fans should be excited about reports linking them to a midfielder who’s won recent comparisons to him.

Forest target the new Gibbs-White

While Forest haven’t been as busy this summer as they’ve been in the past, they’ve still brought in several exciting additions to Nuno’s side.

Dan Ndoye, for example, scored nine goals and provided six assists for Bologna last season; Igor Jesus produced ten goal involvements in 29 games for Botafogo, and Jair Cunha looks like a promising pickup at the back.

However, with the window not closing until the start of next month, the Garibaldi appear determined to complete at least one more signing and bring in a player who’s been compared to Gibbs-White.

At least that is according to a recent report from the Daily Mail, which has claimed that Forest are one of several sides interested in Facundo Buonanotte.

Alongside the Tricky Trees, the report has revealed that West Ham United, Leeds United, Tottenham Hotspur, Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund have all shown an interest in the 20-year-old gem.

The good news is that Brighton & Hove Albion are happy to let the Argentine leave for a Premier League side this summer, but the bad news is that they want him to go on loan, although stories from earlier this summer suggested that the Seagulls could be willing to sell for around £30m.

Regardless of how Forest go about it, they should do what they can to sign Buonanotte this summer, as he’s a seriously exciting player and could become the new Gibbs-White.

How Buonanotte compares to Gibbs-White

In this instance, the comparison between Buonanotte and Gibbs-White stems from FBref, which looked at players in similar positions from Europe’s top five leagues and concluded that the Forest ace has been the ninth most similar attacking midfielder or winger to the 20-year-old over the last 365 days.

We can gain a better understanding of how this conclusion was reached by examining the underlying metrics in which the pair ranks closely.

In this case, these include statistics such as non-penalty expected goals, expected assists, progressive carries, key passes, interceptions, clearances and more, all per 90.

These key numbers help to paint the young Argentine as a midfielder who could match the Englishman when it comes to attacking output, while also being able to chip in with some of the defensive work he’d need to do in a Nuno system.

It’s not just their underlying numbers that are surprisingly similar, though.

For example, in his 3142 minutes of first-team football for last season, the former Wolverhampton Wanderers star scored seven goals and provided ten assists, which comes out as an average of a goal involvement every 184.82 minutes.

For his efforts, the Brighton “magician,” as he was dubbed by Rising Star XI on X, scored six goals and provided three assists in just 1701 minutes of football for Leicester City last season, which, amazingly, comes out as an average of a goal involvement every 189 minutes.

Ultimately, while fans probably shouldn’t expect Buonanotte to be on the same level as Gibbs-White right away, it does seem like he’s not too far off.

Therefore, even if it has to be on loan to begin with, Forest should be doing all they can to sign the 20-year-old dynamo this summer.