Turns out the rumours were true.
It was reported last week that Brennan Johnson was set to enter talks with the clubs about a new contract, and it looks as if that’s been confirmed by Forest’s head boss Sabri Lamouchi.
“I am just the manager. Brennan is doing a lot of good things and the club normally want to keep players like that. He needs to stay with us and to work with us, because he will improve working with the experienced players. He will learn a lot. I think he will sign soon, I hope – I hope that for him and I hope so for the club, of course.”
I found two things interesting about what Lamouchi said. The first thing is that he essentially doesn’t have any say in what goes on in regards to players and their contracts. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with these sort of situations where a manager isn’t involved in contract talks. Surely he needs to talk about how he intends to use him in the future? It’s not good the board giving him first-team wages and then him being left on the bench for instance. But that’s for another time.
Secondly, and more importantly is how he spoke about the deal being done ‘soon’. And that’s my biggest concern about the whole scenario. This is a deal that we need to get done as soon as possible, otherwise we risk losing him to another club for a fraction of what we could really get for him, or maybe even for nothing at all.
I have said before that I think Johnson has a lot to offer this club when it comes to being a player, and hopefully we can see him stay at the club for a long time, but as the Arvin Appiah transfer shows, sometimes these kids don’t stay around for long, and you’ve got to make money out of it if you can.
I wrote a few weeks ago about what sort of role the academy of a club plays and if it should be a money-making machine, or if it should be used as a conveyor belt for players to go into the first team, but whichever way you look at it, they have to be tied down first before you get either of them.
What do you think? Do you think it’s too early for the club to be entering into negotiations with a player who, although he has made a few appearances so far this season, hasn’t exactly set the world alight? Or do you think we should be tying him down as soon as possible?
