Having made a decent start to life at Nottingham Forest last year, winning eight and drawing three of his eighteen matches in charge, Martin O’Neill is in the process of putting together a squad that can make a better push for a promotion spot this season, and shipping players out is just as important, as it allows you to generate funds for those coming in. However, I don’t think he expected these moves to be made in such quick succession.
Having signed forward Hillal Soudani just yesterday, it appears as though Olympiacos are set to make yet another move for some of Martin O’Neill’s men, with reports are coming in from Greek outlet SDNA that they are interested in bringing in yet another red in the form of midfielder Claudio Yacob and Yohan Benalouane.
This move might also be unpopular for the fans, as a recent tweet from this Forest fan and subsequent replies suggest, plenty of fans are happy with the work that Yacob is doing at the moment and they’d be disappointed to lose him. Although given how he only played 17 games last season and didn’t contribute a single goal or assist, maybe it is time to let him go and reinvest in someone that could be more useful to the side.
Whilst Benalouane is probably going to be a lot harder to shift, given that he was Martin O’Neill’s first signing when the joined the club and was a key player in the heart of the defence when he wasn’t suspended, he’s probably not going to let him go that easily.
Whilst this should come as no surprise that Yacob and Benalouane are linked with the side that finished second in the Greek Super League last year because they have the same owner Evangelos Marinakis, surely the fact that these rumours have come out the day after Soudani made the move is a bit strange. Why not just make both moves at the same time? Why make Martin O’Neill worry if he’s about to lose a midfielder and defender and give him less time to find replacements. Surely you should be looking for cohesion between the two clubs rather than making things awkward.
