Telegraph article
Bitter legal threats and personal feud fuelled Nottingham Forest move to keep Morgan Gibbs-White
By fending off Tottenham’s advances, Evangelos Marinakis has made a major statement of intent – and got one over on Daniel Levy
Morgan Gibbs-White will wear the red jersey of
Nottingham Forest this season and, for the club’s owner Evangelos Marinakis, this moment feels like a pointed statement to the powerful ‘Big Six’.
Marinakis is determined to establish Forest as a force in European football and his success in persuading Gibbs-White to reject the riches of
Tottenham Hotspur is another clear sign of progress.
“At the end of the day, we always win,” were Marinakis’s words after an interview on Saturday night confirmed that Gibbs-White has signed a new three-year contract.
Tottenham are preparing for Champions League football under their new head coach Thomas Frank, who was convinced that a deal was inevitable after triggering the £60m release clause.
Yet the full details of the stormy mini-saga, which included bitter legal threats and acrimony between the owners of the two clubs, can be revealed here.
Spurs bungled release-clause activation
After Tottenham made their move on July 10, the fall-out was spectacular. Forest were convinced that Tottenham breached certain levels of confidentiality, and there are even doubts that they matched the exact terms of the release clause.
Such clauses can be very complex, and it is understood that Tottenham fell short of activating a number of conditions.
Forest sent an intention of legal action to Spurs owner Daniel Levy, while an official complaint to the Premier League was also under consideration.
Just over two weeks later, Gibbs-White committing his future to Forest was not in the script. Marinakis flew into Portugal on Thursday with one intention – to resolve the future of his star player. Negotiations advanced quickly and on Saturday night, shortly before a friendly against Fulham, the England international had agreed to stay.
There is no release clause. There is no gentleman’s agreement to leave next summer. Gibbs-White will be the best-paid player in Forest’s history, and Marinakis views this as a major triumph.
Marinakis took Levy approach personally
Tottenham have missed out. The message was relayed to Frank on Saturday night that the deal was off. Marinakis was simply not ready to accept losing this particular battle with Levy. He felt the nature of Levy’s approach was a slur on Forest, and what he is trying to build.
Gibbs-White is relishing the start of the new season, and the team spirit which has defined their evolution under Nuno Espirito Santo cannot be discounted.
The 25-year-old has behaved impeccably as the saga unfolded. There has been no strike action, mysterious injuries or threats of transfer requests. He has reported for training as normal and while many will argue that should be a prerequisite, other Premier League players caught in a similar situations have not always responded in that way.
