Nuno Espirito Santo has made a few bold calls since taking the West Ham United job, but the decision to replace Mads Hermansen with Alphonse Areola actually came from Graham Potter.
In a desperate but understandable last roll of the dice, Potter dropped £18 million summer signing Hermansen before his final game in charge of the Hammers.
And while Nuno Espirito Santo’s London Stadium predecessor would not join the pile-on, removing his big-money glovesman from the firing line after just four Premier League matches in favour of the vastly-experienced Alphonse Areola spoke volumes.
Four Premier League matches in which Hermansen conceded eleven goals.
“I think it’s always a difficult decision when you’re making team selections, certainly at this level,” Potter said just hours before his sacking on September 27th. “Because there are – you can imagine – lots of top players with great attributes.
“I was happy with Alphonse when he came into the team. I think he had a good game, and I’m happy with the competition.”
So, while West Ham United are in no position really to mock the goalkeeping departments of rival Premier League clubs, the lack of game time afforded to John Victor at Nottingham Forest so far at least suggests the East London outfit could have the last laugh following that dramatic summer saga.
John Victor has played once at Nottingham Forest since West Ham United deal collapsed
While the narrative a few weeks ago was that West Ham had missed out on a ‘terrific goalkeeper’, opportunities to showcase that talent have been very few and extremely far between in a Nottingham Forest jersey.
John’s debut, in that stunning, 3-2 Carabao Cup defeat by second-tier Swansea City, was ‘not how he would have wanted his first minutes for the Reds to go’, to quote the Nottingham Post.
Those, though, are currently his only minutes for the two-time European champions.
And while that would normally be pretty understandable – Matz Sels shared the Golden Glove last season with Arsenal’s David Raya, after all – the fact that under-fire Ange Postecoglou chose the Belgian in Forest’s first two Europa League matches may leave John wondering where the next opportunity is going to come from.
Perhaps, the answer to that question is the FA Cup third round, in January.
Because at this stage, while Forest remain on the lookout for their first win of 2025/26 let alone under Postecoglou, Sels is one of the few players who can hold his head up high and say he is performing anywhere near last season’s standard.
Nottingham Forest signed Brazil international John in a deal worth around £10 million in the final hours of the transfer window. That City Ground switch came after talks with the Hammers broke down, not once but twice.
John claimed he rejected West Ham but his actions speak differently
Fabrizio Romano reported that West Ham had a ‘verbal agreement’ with Botafogo at the beginning of August. That was until they opted to push through the signing of the aforementioned Mads Hermansen instead.
Then, in the midst of Hermansen’s nightmare start, West Ham returned with a loan-to-buy offer a few weeks later. By that point, however, Botafogo had their sights firmly fixed on a permanent sale.
So while John did his very best to seize control of the narrative – that initial collapse in negotiations, he claimed, was simply because he wanted to stay at Botafogo rather than anything else – the fact that he would jump at the chance to join Nottingham Forest instead before the deadline speaks for itself.
“Today, I come to express my support to the Botafogo fans, who have supported me so much since the day I arrived here,” the former Real Valladolid and Santos goalkeeper protested initially.
“I did receive an offer [from West Ham] to leave the club and pursue other dreams in my career. I thought about it with my family and needed a few days to talk to you. I’m human, and it’s normal to feel thoughtful at these times, but we chose to continue living Botafogo.
“I never said I wanted to leave the club.”
Of course, he would do just that less than a month later down the line. Though with his game time limited to a Carabao Cup collapse in South Wales, John may privately be wondering if he should have followed his own advice.
