{"id":657995,"date":"2025-08-11T10:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=657995"},"modified":"2025-08-11T10:01:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T14:01:05","slug":"special-manchester-city-attacker-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/08\/11\/special-manchester-city-attacker-exit\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester City Set to Lose &#8216;Special&#8217; Young Attacker Following Surprise Player Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nottingham Forest have been reasonably active in the summer transfer window, signing the likes of Dam Ndoye, Igor Jesus and Jair Cunha whilst operating at a substantial transfer profit. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FabrizioRomano\/status\/1954859358984019970\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fabrizio Romano<\/a>, they are set to use some of this transfer budget to sign Manchester City&#8217;s James McAtee, who was labelled as &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/salfordnow.co.uk\/2025\/01\/13\/i-am-so-happy-for-him-he-is-a-special-player-guardiola-praises-salford-born-james-mcatee-after-ruthless-8-0-win\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">special<\/a>&#8221; by Pep Guardiola, for a fee in excess of \u00a320 million.<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-content content-styled max-w-none\">\n<h2><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">James McAtee Set for \u00a320 Million Move to Nottingham Forest<\/span><\/h2>\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">What Will The Deal Look Like?<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Nuno Espirito Santo&#8217;s side are set to pay a fee of more than \u00a320 million to secure the services of the 22-year-old, who was one of three players left out of the City squad that travelled to Palermo to contest the Anglo-Palermitan Trophy. This seems like a slightly low base fee, given that McAtee is valued at \u00a317.3 million by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transfermarkt.co.uk\/james-mcatee\/profil\/spieler\/583199\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Transfermarkt<\/a>, but there is currently no knowledge of any clauses that the deal may entail. Hugo Viana may have inserted a large sell-on clause into the deal to ensure that City are fairly remunerated if the attacker ever gets a big-money move elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Read More: <\/span><\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/08\/06\/everton-target-jack-grealish-manchester-city\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">David Ornstein \u2013 Everton Open Talks to Sign \u2018Brilliant Footballer\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Romano has also reported that McAtee has <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FabrizioRomano\/status\/1954861360136774047\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">agreed personal terms<\/a> with Forest and that, despite other competitive proposals, the England youth international &#8220;wants&#8221; to be at the City Ground this season. However, the deal has not quite yet been given the famous &#8216;here we go&#8217; seal of approval by the Italian.<\/p>\n<p>A recent decision from the attacker may have sealed his fate. To the surprise of onlookers, he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesun.ie\/sport\/15357746\/man-city-james-mcatee-club-world-cup-euros-england\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">opted to play<\/a> for England&#8217;s U-21 squad at the Euros instead of travelling to the Club World Cup with his club side. Guardiola&#8217;s team crashed out of the competition earlier than expected and have since been spurred into making some changes to the squad.<\/p>\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Where May McAtee Fit in At Forest?<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>It will be interesting to see where McAtee fits in at Forest. Morgan Gibbs-White looks set to stay at the City Ground this summer after his proposed transfer to Tottenham Hotspur has seemingly fallen through. The City Football Academy graduate would have been a perfect replacement for Gibbs-White due to his creativity and relatively good goalscoring record, for someone who is a natural midfielder.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Read More:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/07\/30\/manchester-city-stefan-ortega-transfer-departure\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Manchester City Prepared to Let \u2018Exceptional\u2019 Player Leave Club Following Summer Arrivals<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The departure of Anthony Elanga may mean that there is a spot on the wing up for grabs, but McAtee will have to fight it out with Ndoye, who is Forest&#8217;s big-money signing this summer. Espirito Santo occasionally used a two-striker formation last campaign, with Elanga partnering Chris Wood, but that role may be given to Callum Hudson-Odoi this season as he is more familiar with Forest&#8217;s system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nottingham Forest have been reasonably active in the summer transfer window, signing the likes of Dam Ndoye, Igor Jesus and Jair Cunha whilst operating at a substantial transfer profit. According to Fabrizio Romano, they are set to use some of this transfer budget to sign Manchester City&#8217;s James McAtee, who was labelled as &#8220;special&#8221; by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5507,"featured_media":640445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4475,3,7188],"tags":[32511,7483,8664],"class_list":["post-657995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-nottingham-forest","category-premier-league","category-rumours","tag-james-mcatee","tag-manchester-city-transfer-rumours","tag-nottingham-forest-transfer-rumours"],"modified_by":"Alex Richards, LWOF Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657995"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658028,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657995\/revisions\/658028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}