Jesse Lingard has officially departed Nottingham Forest after one year with the club. On Friday, the East Midlands team announced a dozen players will now become free agents. Half of these players were on the senior squad, while the remaining six featured for the youth side.
Along with Lingard, Forest also parted ways with Andre Ayew, Cafu, Jack Colback, Jordan Smith, and Lyle Taylor. All six players saw their current contracts expire at the club. Billy Fewster, Alex Gibson-Hammond, Ryan Hammond, Nicky Hogarth, Adnan Kanurić, and Lewis Salmon were the youth players to also be released by the team.
Lingard was top earner at Nottingham Forest
The Manchester United product only signed a one-year deal with Forest last summer. While he entered the fray as a free transfer, Lingard was easily the club’s highest-paid player. In fact, the midfielder reportedly earned $250,000 per week. This was double the club’s next leading earner, Dean Henderson. The goalkeeper spent the 2022/23 on loan at Forest from the Red Devils.
While Lingard earned a significant amount of money, he couldn’t quite live up to his massive wages. The midfielder failed to score or assist for the club in 17 total Premier League appearances. He did, however, manage to grab two goals and two assists in Forest’s Carabao Cup run to the semifinals.
Forest owner not afraid to make changes to the squad
Along with Lingard, Forest signed an incredible 30 players throughout the 2022/23 campaign season. Team owner Evangelos Marinakis attempted to completely change his squad after they were promoted from the Championship last summer. Forest previously earned their place back in the Premier League after beating Huddersfield in the playoffs.
The massive amount of incoming transfers certainly seemed to help. Despite many pundits assuming that Forest would find it difficult to avoid relegation, the club stayed up after finishing 16th in the table. Now it seems as if Marinakis will have to make a plethora of new signings this summer after the recent departures to the squad.
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