Speaking on a recent episode of the Last Word On Spurs podcast, Andy Reid reflected on the stand-off between Nottingham Forest and Tottenham Hotspur regarding his transfer.
After impressing during his initial four and a half seasons at Nottingham Forest, over which he scored 22 goals and provided five assists, Spurs made a move for Reid in January 2005, eventually signing him in what was a £7.2 million deal.
During his time in north London, the former Republic of Ireland international made 27 appearances for the club, scoring one goal, before being sold to Charlton Athletic in what was a £3.78 million deal just one-and-a-half years after moving to Spurs.
However, the deal to bring Reid to Tottenham was reportedly over a year in the making, and, speaking on a recent episode of the Last Word On Spurs podcast, the 38-year-old discussed the apparent stand-off between the Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, and the Forest chairman, Nigel Doughty, regarding his move.
He said: “It was a strange time because I had such an affinity with Forest, I really did. I was promised that if I stayed until the end of the season that I would be allowed to leave for a reasonable figure. It got to the end of the season and there was no real investment in the squad. The chairman, Nigel Doughty, God rest him, was scaling back the finances that he was putting into the club, and he had put so much into the club already.
“So, I didn’t feel that the squad was going to get any better [or] that it was going to be able to challenge at the right end of the table, and so I felt that it was the right time [to leave]; I felt there was decent money on offer. And still, I was kind of denied being able to go and leave. Then there seemed to be a little bit of a stand-off between Daniel Levy and Nigel Doughty – not the first one and certainly not the last one.
“So, I ended up handing in a transfer request at the time, which I feel sad that I ended up having to do, but I felt there was no other action that I could have taken. I felt I really needed to make it clear that I wanted the opportunity to go [and play] in the Premier League. I was young, hungry, really wanted to be successful and there was a good opportunity, there.”
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TIF Thoughts on Andy Reid’s comments regarding his move from Nottingham Forest to Tottenham Hotspur…
From Reid’s comments, it would appear that, in order to break the stand-off between Levy and Doughty, the winger was forced into handing a transfer request in at Forest, which eventually saw his move to Spurs go through.
However, considering the fact things did not work out particularly well for the winger at Spurs, and the fact that, later on in his career, he ended up moving back to Nottingham Forest, it could be argued that the saga surrounding his transfer was perhaps a bigger story than anything the winger actually managed to do on the football pitch during his time in north London.