Louis Laing - A Sign of the Future?

Obligatory Superman reference…. can he be our hero?

Louis Laing - playing at England Junior levels

Anyway, Forest have signed a young centre half on free transfer that the principal and style of the signing excites me. Laing himself I am sure will become a good player and will be a great acquisition, but what pleases me is that the club have used their contacts and knowledge to make this work.

Eastick used his extensive knowledge from time with England youth squad to make this work and it pleases me as it shows we have this on our side. The player knows the staff so knows what he's getting. The staff already has a good idea of the player, and have worked with him before.

How many more like this signing could there be? Players who have not quite made the grade at premiership level, or fall through the cracks, and we can turn them around?  Laing found first team chances hard to come by at Sunderland, but with an almost revolving door on the manager's office and new ideas and player is being bought in, he never quite made it.

I know people will say that we need ambition, and that these signings we won't progress, if we just use cast offs from these clubs how can we hope to compete eventually with them? However, even for squad depth if nothing else, a fairly inexpensive signing with a young hungry player would be better than Danny Collins (and how I have defended him before, but contend maybe his time is up) We can compete because these guys who premiership clubs don't want to risk need a chance to prove, and getting released and dropping a level might cause Laing to be more determined to kick on.

Think of the array of talent that comes to this level and kick starts their career and with freebies elsewhere blossoming it can't hurt to give these guys a go.

I have seen people's immediate response on twitter of "Who?" and think that we in theory should only sign big names, but we tried that, it didn't work. But also there's less pressure if these guys come in under the radar, blend in for a few weeks or months and then cement first team places. But that won't stop those who seem to think house hold names are the way forward for the club.


It’s a positive move, and hopefully an indicator of what's to come. The fact that we beat other clubs to this signature is a huge plus sign for me, and that youngsters know the regime and want to come here and shine. It gives me an excellent feeling for the times ahead that we can build something wonderful.