Forest may have the glory of transforming Oliver Burke into history’s most expensive Scotsman but they’d rather he was wreacking havoc on the wing instead.
Gary Birtles has told the Nottingham Post that the loss of Scottish sensation Oliver Burke is one of the major factors in Forest’s collapsing form.
Burke, who has been relentlessly likened to Gareth Bale due to his powerful stride and ability to burn past opponents one-on-one, moved to nouveau-riche Bundesliga newcomers RB Leipzig in the summer after just 25 appearances in the Forest first-team.
Philippe Montanier’s side have not won a single league match since the teenager’s departure and Birtles, who lifted the European Cup twice with Forest in 1979 and 1980, admits that the club’s attack has been irreparably blunted as a result.
“Burke’s departure has to be a factor in that run of form. Not the main factor, but a factor nonetheless,” the 60-year-old wrote in his column for the Nottingham Post.
“He was in great form when he left; he’d just got people really sitting up and taking notice of what he was doing.
“Everyone loves to see players who go past people. Burke did that; Michail Antonio (below) also did it when he was at Forest. But those players are few and far between.”
Antonio spent just one season at the City Ground in 2014/15, his dynamic forward bursts and thunderbolt strikes earning him a step up to the Premier League with West Ham.
The 26-year-old has stood out in a struggling Hammers outfit this season and was rewarded with his first England call-up in August, while Burke has enjoyed a dream transition to German football, setting up a winner against Borussia Dortmund on his debut.
This will undoubtedly make a winless run stretching to six games even tougher to swallow for the frequently put-upon Forest faithful, especially with controversial owner Fawaz Al-Hasawi’s (below) failure to invest the £13 million he received from the sale of the club’s prize asset, according to the BBC, back into the squad.
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