Nottingham Forest under old management sold 18-year-old Patrick Bamford for £1.5million in 2012. Two years later and it looks like it could be a decision to hurt the City Ground faithful for years to come.
Nottingham Forest took the decision to cash in on academy prodigy Patrick Bamford for £1.5million to the regret of manager, at the time, Steve Cotterill.
The striker had made noises that he wasn’t entirely happy at his position within the club, having publicly turned down two contract offers from the former Champions League winners.
Nottingham Forest were trying to cut back on their wage-bill and get their affairs in order around the time Bamford was sold. The club had reportedly made on average 11-million-pound losses a year for the past decade, and something needed to change.
Steve Cotterill was upset at losing his prosperous young striker commenting:
”I’m as sad as I was with (Wes) Morgan going. That’s the fact of life of this football club at this moment in time”
Bizarrely the transfer ended up in the much-coveted book ‘I am the secret footballer’ and was based around the money big clubs offer for teenagers, and smaller clubs touting out their young prospects.
The book uses the Patrick Bamford transfer as an example of what big clubs are willing to throw at young, unproven players.
However, recently it looks like Chelsea found themselves a bargain with the young players scoring for fun in League One, and has been recently called-up by manager Gareth Southgate for the England under-21s.
I think in the modern game any young player doing well in the Football League, whether it be the Championship or League Two usually gets hit with a pretty pricey transfer figure. Nick Powell was signed by Manchester United from League Two play-off winners Crewe Alexander for £4 million+ and in the Championship both Connor Wickham and Jonjo Shelvey saw crazy fee’s paid out for them, despite proving very little.
So, I think you can praise Chelsea’s visionary scouting system for their endeavours bringing Bamford to the club for a cut-down price. I think even if they were to sell him now they would be able to at very least double their money for the young talent, but it seems he could soon be battling out for a first team place with the likes of Samuel Eto’o and Fernando Torres.
From a Nottingham Forest perspective his headlining performances must be a kick in the teeth. Despite being under a different ownership and management, they have notoriously been lacking a goal-scoring striker. Darius Henderson is currently Nottingham Forest highest scoring striker with a measly four goals in 13 games, which is clearly not good enough for a side with play-off aspirations.
The timing of Nottingham Forest dropping points because of a lack of quality upfront, and Bamford being touted as the next England star must be tough to take for fans, especially when the scenario could have been avoided by giving him the deal he wanted and allowing him to break into the first-team.
What do you think of the Patrick Bamford scenario? Could he have been the difference for Forest this season…
image: © mapperley_jas
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