Whenever transfer rumours start, it doesn’t take long for Gillingham’s Matt Jarvis to be mentioned – a highly rated wide player capable of playing left or right, it’s unsurprising why he’s quite alluring for Forest fans who’ve suffered widthless dreary football for the majority of the season! According to the Nottingham Evening Post, we’ve made a £250k bid to bring him to the City Ground – which will involve an initial loan similar to the deal we struck for Nathan Tyson.
Given the interest from other clubs (at Championship level), I imagine that initial bid will be knocked back – remembering how the Gills unscrupulous chairman Paul Scally dealt with the Marlon King transfer (what is it with us and Gillingham players?!) I imagine he’ll be more than happy to sit on his resource and kick off as much of a bidding war as he can. But then, perhaps we may have earned some goodwill by releasing Nicky Southall from his contract to rejoin the Kent club?
The paper does quote Smoulds as saying:
“Jarvis is a player we have been watching for a while.
“We would be very interested in bringing him to the club.”
Clearly there’s some truth in us targeting him – whether or not we can pull off the transfer is another matter entirely. I think a signing like this would go some way to alleviate continued frustration from Forest fans about our activity in the January window. It’s clear to see that we are painfully narrow with no natural wide players (aside from Commons – and no, I don’t mean his waistline!), which puts us in a position where devious chairmen could well find themselves in a position where they might want to squeeze more cash out of us.
Of course, with around a week until the ‘magic’ date of 28th when Smoulds said signings would be made in order to be eligible to play in a potential play-off final, I expect the rumours and gossip to start to ramp up. This one at least has some confirmation with a quote from the manager – of course, whether he made that quote now or last season whilst still at Northampton is anyone’s guess given the Evening Posts’ track record!
Filed under: News
