Elliot Anderson: Nottingham Forest's Rising Star Amid Transfer Speculation

At Nottingham Forest, the phone may be ringing in the boardroom, but nobody should expect the doors at the City Ground to swing open easily.

Interest from Manchester City and Manchester United in Elliot Anderson is real enough, yet prising him away from Trentside would require more than a polite enquiry and a glossy presentation. Evangelos Marinakis does not deal in bargains. Forest’s owner has built a reputation as one of the game’s hardest negotiators, and he will only even consider a sale if it leaves the club’s coffers significantly swollen and its long-term project strengthened.

The numbers being whispered around Anderson underline that stance. Any club wanting to test Forest’s resolve has been warned to start the conversation at nine figures. A fee north of £100 million has been suggested for a midfielder expected to shine on the biggest stage this summer, with Thomas Tuchel planning to make him a central part of England’s World Cup bid in North America. If he delivers there, that valuation may begin to look less like posturing and more like the going rate.

Anderson is built for that kind of stage. Jack Colback, who knows the City Ground and its demands as well as anyone, has watched his rise closely. Speaking in association with Bally Bet, the former Forest midfielder painted the picture of a player who feels like a throwback and a prototype all at once. In an era obsessed with pigeonholing midfielders as No.6s, No.8s or No.10s, Anderson simply ignores the labels.

He tackles. He dictates. He creates. He runs beyond. His defensive work, Colback says, is outstanding. On the ball, he sets the rhythm. He is, in Colback’s words, “one of those that does it all” – the kind of all-court midfielder elite clubs spend years trying to find and, once they do, are loath to lose. If his trajectory continues, he has the tools to sit among the very best.

Forest, though, are no longer a club defined by one rising star. Anderson is part of a core that has dragged the Reds back into the modern conversation. Morgan Gibbs-White has already become a talisman in the Garibaldi, a No.10 with swagger, end product and the personality to carry a team. Behind them, Murillo has emerged as the kind of centre-half who changes the way a side defends.

Colback was still at the club when the Brazilian arrived, and the first impression was striking. In the flesh, Murillo can look like the sort of defender who lives on the edge, the kind that tempts fate with his confidence on the ball. Yet watch him closely and another picture forms: a 23-year-old who reads danger early, reacts sharply and recovers with authority when the moment demands it.

Forest have felt his absence this season. Injuries have stripped him from the back line at times, and the team’s form has dipped accordingly. For Colback, that only underlines how shrewd the club’s recent recruitment has been. Murillo, Anderson, Gibbs-White – they are not accidents. They are the product of a strategy that has steadily improved the squad over several windows, backed consistently by Marinakis.

That commitment has been formalised in Murillo’s latest contract, which ties him to the City Ground until 2030. If he stays the course, he has the chance to stand alongside Gibbs-White as a modern Forest icon, the kind of player remembered in the same breath as the club’s promotion heroes and cup warriors of previous eras.

Some of those figures have already been back in familiar surroundings. Colback, a key part of the side that climbed out of the Championship in 2022, has recently returned to the banks of the Trent as Forest and front-of-shirt partner Bally Bet turned the spotlight on a very different corner of the game.

Bally Bet set out to honour the long-serving stalwarts of grassroots football, the players who turn up week after week on public pitches and council fields, long after the glamour fades. Forest great Mark Crossley was handed the task of assembling the first-ever All-Stars Vets squad – a team built not on market value or social media reach, but on character, stories and sheer love of the game.

Crossley did not work alone. Other familiar Forest faces joined him in picking a squad that captured the spirit of Sunday mornings and muddy touchlines. Once selected, the All-Stars were treated like top-flight pros. They swapped recreation grounds for the City Ground, pulling on their kits and walking out under the stands to face a side of hand-picked Forest legends on May 28.

For one afternoon, the gap between elite and grassroots narrowed. The same pitch that may soon host a £100m midfielder and a centre-half tied down until 2030 belonged to veterans whose reward was not a transfer but a memory.

At Forest, that contrast feels fitting. A club fighting to keep hold of its brightest talents is also taking time to celebrate the players who never had a price tag at all. The question now is simple: when the next bid lands on Marinakis’ desk, will the City Ground remain the stage for Anderson and Murillo – or become the place they are remembered from?