I wonder if this will be the final time I have to write him a goodbye article.
Adlène Guédioura completed his move to Qatari side Al Gharafa over the weekend, bringing his third spell at the club to an end. However, I’m not sure if the club have made the right decision in letting him go.
I said a couple of weeks ago that I thought Guédioura still had some use to Forest. Even though he may be pushing on a bit at age 33, he didn’t necessarily have to start every game. But because of his flexibility, acting predominantly as a central midfielder for Forest and a defensive midfielder for Algeria in the African cup of Nations, that meant he could act as a sort of utility player to come off the bench when Forest are winning games to sure things up in the middle of the park. You could even just keep him as a rotation option for cup games, or if players need a rest during the frantic Championship schedule. Either way for him to be deemed ‘surplus to requirements’ by some Forest fans just doesn’t sit right with me, because he didn’t have to be.
At the end of the day, it could simply have been an offer that the club couldn’t afford to turn down. In which case, hopefully it was a big enough fee that the club can do something with it, because I still maintain that there was some benefit in keeping him around.
Whilst Forest do have a rather large squad and cuts were always going to have to be made to bring some level of balance to it, I just feel that other players should have been sold first, namely Ben Watson, Claudio Yacob and Liam Bridcutt.
We won’t truly know if this is a bad move until we get to a situation where we need him, say if there’s an injury crisis and Sabri Lamouchi is struggling to find someone to play in that role, but until then, I’ll hold firm and say it was a bad one, because at the end of the day I’d rather have him and not need him than need him and not have him.
