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Loan deal should be final move for underperforming 24-year-old – opinion

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A lot of the focus on Nottingham Forest the past couple of days has been on who is coming and going off the pitch.

However, let’s not forget that there’s also set to be some movement on the pitch too. Journalist Alan Nixon is reporting that League Two side Oldham Athletic are poised to make a run at signing 24-year-old forward Zach Clough, with The Sun (via The Nottingham Post) stating that it is likely to be a loan move.

It’s set to be a familiar recurrence for Clough who spent the majority of last season at Rochdale, where he had a less than satisfactory return with just one goal and one assist during his time at Spotland, both of which came in his first game, a 2-1 win over Bury in the Checkatrade Trophy.

Zach Clough was seen as a rising star during his days at Bolton, both in their fight to stay in the Championship in 2015/16 and then during their push for promotion from League One in 2016/17, winning player of the month for October along the way. In fact, it was the goals in the first half of that campaign that saw him move to the City Ground in January 2017.

Things started brightly for him, he firmly endeared himself to the Forest supporters for his goal in the early stages of the East Midlands Derby, which he celebrated by shushing the traveling Derby fans. However, things haven’t quite gone to plan since that day for him. Since getting off to that impressive start when he first joined the club, he just hasn’t been able to repeat the form that earned him the move and has found himself frozen out, relegated to a primarily substitute role, before finding himself loaned out to Rochdale.

It’s come to the stage where I think Forest need to just cut their losses and be done with Clough. His time at the club is over, he just isn’t producing at the rate he should for it to be worth holding on to him. If this is indeed a loan move coming up, then they need to include a ‘with an option to buy’ clause in there as well.

The fact that he’s gone from being loaned to a League One team to now being linked with a League Two team shows how his career is going backward, there’s no point in hanging on to someone who is essentially dead weight at this stage. And with reports coming in that new boss Lamouchi is looking at players from his former teams to help bolster the side, the writing is on the wall for Zach Clough that it’s time to step away from the City Ground.

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