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It is only a short drive back to the East Midlands, but it would have felt like an age for Nottingham Forest as they stewed on the ramifications of Thursday night’s 4-0 defeat to Aston Villa.

Morgan Gibbs-White was probably fed up of the thinking time already, Forest’s No 10 having cut a powerless figure on the sidelines at Villa Park.

One of the more enduring images of this Europa League semi-final against Aston Villa was the sight of a stitched-up Gibbs-White on the Forest bench, sporting a Harry Potter scar and bruises around both eyes.

He was named among the substitutes, but clearly he was not fit to play, making Monday’s clash of heads with Chelsea goalkeeper Robert Sanchez as crucial as any other moment of this tie, which Villa turned around emphatically.

For those fans in red, it was a tough watch. Forest never looked like troubling Villa, recording just two shots on target, making the what-could-have-beens with Gibbs-White fit a futile but inevitable reflection.

Gibbs-White has played his way into World Cup contention of late, thriving at Forest after being convinced to stay last summer by owner Evangelos Marinakis – turning down Tottenham Hotspur’s advances and extending his contract to 2028.

It was a “statement of intent” in Forest’s own words, with Marinakis regarding a move to Tottenham a backwards’ step for the attacking midfielder.

The Greek knew what was possible with Gibbs-White in the squad, and even through this madcap season – copy and paste for Forest fans these days – featuring four permanent managers and a relegation battle, the Champions League still drew closer thanks to the Europa League’s offering.

Last week’s 1-0 win over Villa in the first leg took them within touching distance – 180 minutes away – but Thursday reverse set them back at least another year, and was a chastening reminder of where Forest truly stand against a club they would love to emulate, never mind Brentford, Bournemouth and Brentford, one of whom could yet reach the Champions League as well.

Read more

Daniel Storey: Morgan Gibbs-White is stung by England exile – and Forest have reaped the rewards

Michael Hincks: Aston Villa’s John McGinn is the Premier League signing of the decade

It is worth remembering Forest were without a host of other regular starters beyond solely Gibbs-White, with Murillo, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ibrahim Sangare and Ola Aina also absent due to injury.

And the sobering reality is that this could be a mere glimpse of the times that lie ahead.

The Champions League would have given Forest a foundation to thrive, to build around Gibbs-White and ensure he is not merely the talisman but one of many.

Instead, it will now be harder to convince some players to stay. Gibbs-White may well be glad he did not leave for Tottenham after all, but with an England place uncertain, the 26-year-old could get itchy feet if he misses out on Thomas Tuchel’s squad for North America.

The widely-coveted Elliot Anderson meanwhile looks destined to leave, The i Paper reporting Manchester City are in pole position ahead of Manchester United to sign the midfielder.

Murillo also has admirers, including United, Liverpool and Real Madrid, and the loss of those two players in Forest’s spine, even while retaining others, would have a major impact: Anderson and Murillo could fetch north of £150m combined, but their departures would set a far different tone for the summer than the one Marinakis would have wanted. There would have to be more conversations with players within the squad, and tougher talks when it comes to enticing players without the lure of the Champions League.

And who ever knows what is around the corner with Forest. Vitor Pereira has steadied the ship, a 10-game unbeaten run pulling them six points clear of the drop zone with three games to go, and taking them to a European semi-final.

However, Pereira also enjoyed a bright start at Wolverhampton Wanderers before it went south at the start of this season.

The Portuguese is not one for longevity. His previous five roles have all lasted less than a year, his stint with Chinese Super League outfit Shanghai SIPG from 2017 to 2020 the longest he has ever managed.

But then again, Marinakis is not one for managers hanging around either, an approach that very nearly paid off until it very much didn’t, meaning this season now reads as a once-in-a-generation opportunity squandered.

We will never know how this European campaign would have played had Nuno Espirito Santo remained in charge, or reigning Europa League winner Ange Postecoglou, or Sean Dyche for that matter.

What does matter is the direction in which they’ve gone, and the fear they could retreat further still once the transfer window opens.

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The trend tends to go: the bigger the club, the bigger the financial loss. And in League One, they don’t get bigger than Bolton Wanderers.

Last season, the cumulative losses across all 24 teams were £154m in the third tier of English football.

Bolton contributed just under £14m. In a league awash with debt and negative numbers, that did not even move the dial. In fact, the club insisted it was a “deliberate strategy”.

Then nothing else was said. Remember: this is League One, where money has a very short shelf life.

Those losses can be offset if promotion is achieved – which is why the spending was planned.

Yet with a wage bill that is astonishingly 98.8 per cent of Bolton’s turnover, failure to climb the ladder could lead to the most spectacular fall.

“It costs millions just to turn the lights on at places like this,” a source close to the club told The i Paper.

“This is a Premier League stadium that costs the same as a Premier League stadium to put matches on, yet we are charging League One prices.

“You have to gamble in this division like nowhere else. I’m not sure how much longer it can go on.”

For so long a top-flight staple, Bolton have been dragged down by the financial burden of the stadium, stuck in the third tier or lower for seven years.

It is all well and good when you have owners who are willing to take on these debts.

But what happens when they get bored?

There are only a finite number of businesspeople willing to adopt a loss-leading enterprise from the outset, one with little hope of breaking even, never mind making a profit.

Carlisle United had a wage bill of £7m in a season they were relegated from the Football League.

Bolton simply must go up. Everyone is banking on it. But living on the edge is not just the modus operandi of the club’s hierarchy.

Supporters have been given the roughest of rides this season.

A breathless 13 stoppage-time goals have earned Bolton a crucial 18 points that have been the difference between a shot at promotion and mid-table obscurity, followed by the impending financial oblivion.

The average minute of a Bolton goal this season is 58 – by far the highest in League One. And they keep getting later, and later.

Ibrahim Cissoko’s 101st-minute strike in the 3-3 draw with Huddersfield Town lays claim to being one of the latest goals ever scored by the club.

It is likely to take another of these last-gasp interventions to get the better of a Bradford City side who Wanderers drew with in their final league match of the campaign.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: My love affair with Grimsby Town
• Daniel Storey: If you hate Millwall, I have two things to say to you

The alternative does not bear thinking about.

“So many clubs fly by the seat of their pants in everything they do,” a source says.

“It is just numbers to them. As long as they go up, they can write those losses off down the line.

“It isn’t clubs like ours’ fault, though. But it cannot go on like this.”

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VILLA PARK — Slow and steady wins this Midlands race, and now one night in Istanbul stands between Aston Villa and their biggest achievement for 44 years.

For there in Turkey lies the tangible reward for calm progress under Unai Emery. What would be the cherry on top of the Spaniard’s era.

And while the Europa League is not quite the European Cup, a generation of Villa supporters have waited patiently to witness their side lift major silverware, and they will believe now is finally the time after a raucous evening at Villa Park.

It felt fitting too that Emiliano Buendia, Ollie Watkins and John McGinn were their heroes on the night, the trio – among Villa’s old guard – uniting to turn this Europa League semi-final against Nottingham Forest around, from 1-0 down after the first leg to emphatic 4-1 winners on aggregate.

INCREDIBLE

John McGinn scores an almost identical goal minutes after his last and Aston Villa have four

TNT Sports and HBO Max pic.twitter.com/yNwyv9oXO7

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 7, 2026

Watkins played like a man possessed, before and especially after he was bandaged up following a collision with Morato. He looked intent on securing that World Cup spot, and this performance must surely have solidified the England striker’s position as Harry Kane’s back-up in North America this summer.

Prince William, who roared on every goal from the stands at Villa Park, would surely give Watkins’ inclusion in Thomas Tuchel’s squad the royal seal of approval.

Watkins had got the ball rolling for Villa, eradicating the early nerves when tapping in the opener on the night and leveller on aggregate.

Buendia had danced his way through Forest’s defence to assist, and the Argentine then scored Villa’s second from the spot after VAR intervened for a pull on Pau Torres’ shirt by Nikola Milenkovic.

Loaned out last year and free to leave last summer, few Villa fans could have foreseen Buendia leading the charge in a European semi-final in 2026, yet here he was providing the creative spark that Forest could not put out.

Buendia then rolled the carpet out for captain McGinn to take centre stage, the Scot rolling in two left-footed strikes to seal Villa’s place in the final.

John McGinn scored in Aston Villa’s 2019 play-off final win to earn promotion to the Premier League.

Seven years later, he’s scored a brace to send them to a European final.

What a journey pic.twitter.com/oEwQYowDVD

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 7, 2026

A better pound for pound signing you will not find in the Premier League. McGinn joined from Hibernian for £2.75m in 2018.

That equates to just north of £340k for every year of service, less than £8,500 for every game played, while every goal – now 35 – has cost Villa just £79,000.

A bargain in modern football and a legend of the club already, McGinn was there with Villa in the Championship, scoring in the 2019 play-off final to help them return to the Premier League, and since then he has grafted his way towards becoming a player they dare not start without.

And though signed before Emery took charge, like Buendia and Watkins, McGinn has come to symbolise everything positive about Villa under the Spaniard.

“He’s been amazing,” McGinn said of Emery after the victory over Forest. “But so have all the managers I’ve played under. Steve Bruce gave me the confidence to play in England, Dean Smith gave me the confidence to play in the Premier League, Steven Gerrard taught me how to be a leader.”

Together, Villa and McGinn have punched above their weight, and now the crowning moment of the Emery era is within touching distance, with Freiburg their final opponents on 20 May.

“It would mean everything,” McGinn said at the prospect of lifting silverware with Villa.

He would be the first Villa captain to do so since Andy Townsend in 1996, and no one in claret and blue would deserve it more.

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Tony Mowbray will never forget the moment he first set eyes on Amad Diallo.

“When I got the call to manage Sunderland it was out of the blue so my thinking was simple: judge them on what they do on the training pitch,” he recalls. And one player was impossible to ignore – the slight 20-year-old loan signing who “seemed to just be having fun”.

“With Amad the ball was just stuck to his left foot, no-one could get the ball off him or get anywhere near him. He’s that kind of player who can beat three men in a phone box, you know? I turned to my assistant Mark Venus and said: ‘This kid is a genius. Why hasn’t he been playing?'”

It didn’t take long for Mowbray to change that. Diallo was deployed as a “false nine”, played 37 times and scored 13 goals in a season where Sunderland rediscovered themselves.

He signed for a club who had just returned to the Championship after four seasons in League One but the storm clouds were gathering. Manager Alex Neil had walked out in protest at the club’s model, which he felt wouldn’t allow them to compete in the second tier. Questions were being asked of the ownership.

The unassuming Diallo arrived off the back of a failed loan spell at Rangers – his talent was undoubted but expectations were fairly muted. He ended up becoming one of the most important loan signings in the club’s history, helping to shift the mood around the club profoundly.

“At the time I don’t think Sunderland fans really knew what to expect. They’d been in League One but it’s a massive club so expectations are high,” Mowbray says.

“Amad ended up being perfect for us. Hugely, hugely talented boy but also not in the slightest bit flashy or arrogant. He’s quite insular, certainly not gregarious, not a ‘look at me’ type because he does it with his feet instead.

“Hard work is a non-negotiable at Sunderland. They loved Amad because he did all of that, put his body on the line, got into his tackles, but he was also unbelievably talented as well.”

Mowbray is typically modest about his role in Diallo’s progress but the player was moved to tears by a video message from his former manager that was shown to him in a Sky interview this week.

“As I do with all footballers, I try and encourage him to be the best version of themselves by reconnecting with their inner child,” Mowbray recalls.

“To be a professional footballer you’ve all been the best player in your school team. We’ve all been the best in the district and the county and he needed to find his inner child and believe in his talent.

“I was constantly saying ‘Give the ball to Amad, give the ball to Amad’ and it grew really. He didn’t want to let the team down, he knew he had a responsibility and he just did amazingly well.”

Diallo travels to Wearside this weekend with his Manchester United career at a bit of a crossroads. Performances since the Africa Cup of Nations have been below the standards he set early in the season and with big spending planned for the summer, there have been the first rumblings about his long-term future at Old Trafford.

Michael Carrick has talked him up and it’s understood he has support behind the scenes but an error against Liverpool last week was typical of his recent travails.

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If confidence ever wavered, The i Paper understands that Sunderland would make their pitch. Still considered a “dream signing” by key figures in the club’s recruitment department, the Black Cats have tried several times to re-sign Diallo since that first loan spell. Every time Manchester United have knocked them back but interest endures.

“We certainly wanted to bring him back and it would have happened if it was possible because he loved his time at Sunderland,” Mowbray says.

“But I remember saying to Stuart Harvey that on the back of what he’d achieved with us he would get a chance. Their loans manager was in the stands most weeks, so they knew what they had. Of course I wanted him back but I was also happy for him that he got the chance at Manchester United because I couldn’t speak highly enough about him as a person and a footballer.”

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If fortune really does favour the brave then Oli McBurnie should be on the brink of the most remarkable promotion to the Premier League with Hull City.

This most interesting footballer, a throwback centre-forward who admits he wears “toddler’s shinpads” due to superstition and has a passion for travel, is certainly not afraid to take a risk. When he was 19 he nearly left Bradford City to join Freiburg, a move he had his heart set on after Googling Baden-Württemberg and thinking it looked “pretty picturesque”.

Two years ago he turned down a contract offer from Sheffield United to uproot his young family and join Las Palmas, learning Spanish within a few weeks and embracing life in the sun-kissed Canary Islands, where he became something of a cult hero.

Last summer he was at it again, taking another huge leap of faith to join Hull. The Tigers were a club under a transfer embargo, who had just appointed a little-known manager and were among the favourites for relegation. The general consensus when he signed: what on earth is he thinking?

Hull City felt different

“There were a few raised eyebrows, for sure, but I don’t like taking the safe option,” McBurnie tells The i Paper of his decision to join the Tigers over former club Sheffield United and a clutch of rival Championship clubs who were vying for his signature.

“But Hull felt a bit different. I like to do my due diligence and I had a few conversations – with [sporting director] Jared Dublin and (manager) Sergej Jakirovic. Acun [Ilicali] is also such an enthusiastic owner and that really came across but he wanted me to make a football decision, not an emotional one.

“He was almost sitting in the background until I signed, then when I made the decision he couldn’t do enough for me. Maybe you didn’t see it from the outside but I thought all the ingredients were there to be a successful team and successful club.”

Nine months on McBurnie feels his hunch has been “vindicated”. Having over performed all season Hull regained their momentum to sneak back into the play-offs on a dramatic final day of the season that saw them leapfrog Wrexham and tee up a two-legged semi-final with Millwall. The club are the underdogs in the play-offs but are embracing it.

“I’d never thought of it this way but someone said to me the other day we were the only club who wanted to be in the play-offs on that final day,” McBurnie says.

“Millwall and Middlesbrough were playing for an outside chance of second, maybe that will have an impact, who knows? We’re all buzzing, there’s no fear, we’re just looking forward to it and I just think it’s going to be a special night, an ‘old school’ sort of Friday night game under the lights. It feels like whole city is up for it.”

Jakirovic gets it

Ilicali, the larger-than-life Turkish media mogul who bought the club four years ago, has driven the project and was in tears at the final whistle on Saturday. He came into the dressing room after the game and gave the players a memorable speech.

“He has promised a few things, yeah. He said to us ‘You will see how crazy I really am if we get promoted’ so I like the sound of that. I’d like to see what he means.”

If they’re going to do that, you’d think McBurnie will have a big say in it. His 17 goals – already two more than he promised Jakirovic when they first met – have played a huge part in Hull’s success but so too has their unheralded manager.

In an era of bosses hung up on projects and philosophies, McBurnie believes he “gets” the Championship as well as any manager he has played under.

“One of the best things I can say about the manager is his adaptability. It’s not kind of his way or the highway, it’s not a dictatorship. He’s not stubborn like a lot of managers typically are and I think that’s been one of the reasons we’ve done so well this year,” he explains.

“It’s probably hard to game plan us against us because we play so many different ways against different teams.

“It’s been brilliant for me – the manager’s giving me the freedom to go out and play how I want to play and kind of making the game plan about getting balls in the box.”

World Cup hopes

Mystifyingly it has not been enough to turn the head of Steve Clarke which is why McBurnie’s second aim this season – to get into Scotland’s World Cup plans – is likely to evade him.

“I’m happy with my efforts. I have done all I can and ultimately it’s the manager’s decision. I have to respect whichever way he goes,” he says.

McBurnie’s other frustration is that he is regarded by some as belonging to the category of forwards who are too good for the Championship but not good enough for the Premier League. Nonsense, he insists.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: My love affair with Grimsby Town
• Daniel Storey: If you hate Millwall, I have two things to say to you

“I think I’ve got nearly 100 Premier League games now, probably nearly half of my footballing career has been in the Premier League,” he says.

“The last two out of the three seasons when I was top scorer for Sheffield United [that was] in the Premier League and the last year that I was there was really hampered by injuries.

“I think I had maybe six goals, four assists but I only started 14 games or something due to injuries and a couple of suspensions, which might be my own fault.

“From that I’ve always felt like I could compete at the top level. I do feel like I’ve got unfinished business in the Premier League.”

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Sport does an effective line in signposting your second chances, daring you to look failure square in the eyes as you try to nick redemption out of its back pocket. In the final home game of last season, Grimsby Town had a shot at the top seven in front of their biggest crowd in 12 years and they blew it.

In the final home game of this season, against Swindon Town, the same bumper crowd and the same opportunity. Grimsby Town won 4-0. David Artell’s men were rampant. It felt like a redemption, a celebration and an exorcism all in one. The prize comes this week: two games from Wembley.

I am forever drawn back to this place. I love everything about Blundell Park: the sea, the terraced housing, watching tankers from the old big stand, the sense that everybody is coming together, the sheer permanence of the place, rising like a church over a small town. It is the club whose staff are the friendliest in the country and that is something that sticks with you.

It is undeniable that this part of the UK has struggled badly. The decline of the fishing industry took jobs away and nobody was told of any plan to replace them. It created deep, understandable resentment.

They wanted someone to listen and the only people who even seemed to try were bad faith actors. Play it on repeat in end-of-the-line coastal towns where the residents feel disenfranchised through the deliberate ignorance by governments of their lot.

It is also true that Grimsby Town struggled too and impossible to ignore how those two strands become intertwined, even if it is purely coincidental and fatalism is bunk. It is 20 years since Grimsby competed in Football League play-offs and it might as well be half a lifetime.

Then they hoped it was the end of the three-year slide: 24th (relegated), 21st (relegated), 18th. But no such luck. Grimsby didn’t go up and just fell down again. Over the last 15 years, they have spent almost half of their life as a non-league club after 99 consecutive years of league football. Around here, that was a calamity.

Grimsby Town’s fortunes changed in 2021, when Jason Stockwood and Andrew Pettit, two men of the town and lifelong supporters who made their money elsewhere, came home again.

Their intention, and their delivery, has been not just to revitalise the football club but help the local area too. They have achieved fine work in both. Those intertwined strands become visible again, but this time not as a self-destructive cycle but as symbiosis.

Their wealth has made a huge difference, although it is invested rather than spent wildly and there is a plan to make the club one of the most sustainable in the EFL. It is both unhelpfully patronising and romantic to suggest otherwise. Nothing makes things change like money.

But I believe that it does make a difference who they are too. There is an emotional devastation caused by seeing desolation manifest in the place you grew up and it creates a charge to lead a movement.

The reflective pride is greater too. So is your authority and your authenticity and both generate buy-in from the people.

The local area is rebounding. It is a world leader in offshore wind power. There is a £100m regeneration project and it can be a natural home of the renewable energy industry.

The only jokes about fishing are the self-deprecating ones sung from the Findus Stand.

On the pitch, Artell has been better than almost all before him at creating that works and entertains and one that is capable of overcoming a setback before it leads to a rut, never easy at clubs who have been burnt in the recent past.

Until September 2024, Grimsby hadn’t won consecutive league games for 18 months.

Grimsby wobbled after their magnificent cup run in the autumn, but recovery was emphatic. Since Christmas they top the League Two table. They have three players with 10 or more league goals, a rare diversification of goal-scoring here. This season is Grimsby’s highest-scoring in the Football League since 1979.

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But most of all this is an accumulation of good sense, on and off the pitch, coming together to create better. Incoherence and uncertainty are the two biggest barriers to progress in the EFL. This is a club and a team that knows itself, a quiet revelation. As such, it doesn’t appear as vast overachievement – rather the optimism of competence.

Promotion would be the next step and an important one, given its symbolism – projects need mileposts and places to hang their hats. But something has changed anyway, and hopefully for good.

For too long, Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Grimsby Town were places where people looked back with resentment at what went wrong or what might have been. Now people are looking forward again. As someone who loves coming here, I think that is pretty great.

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Enzo Maresca is “ready and waiting” to take over from Pep Guardiola this summer if, as many in football circles increasingly believe, the Manchester City boss decides to call time on his glittering spell at the Etihad.

Guardiola is keeping his cards characteristically close to his chest when it comes to a decision over whether to see out the two-year contract he signed in 2025. The i Paper has been told, however, that City’s succession planning has seen them sound out Maresca – to the extent that the former Chelsea boss is now seen as “off limits” by other top Premier League and European clubs who are searching for a manager.

Succession planning has been one of the areas City have become a market leader in, with several sources telling The i Paper that should Guardiola go this summer, there are plans in place beyond the next appointment.

One source close to the club said that Vincent Kompany being appointed manager in a few years, after Maresca has steadied a transitional City side, is “inevitable”.

After an inauspicious start to life in management at Burnley, Kompany has created one of the most exhilarating teams to watch in Europe at Bayern Munich. While sources stressed he will not want to leave Munich yet, given his Bavarian project is still in its infancy, City will “always be appealing”.

Kompany had a statue erected outside the Etihad Stadium in recognition of the role the former club captain had in City’s rise.

Guardiola, arguably the greatest manager of all time, can make a decision whenever he wants – he has earned that right. If there is even a chance he stays, City will hold on for as long as possible.

The uncertainty around Guardiola is nothing new. All season there have been rumblings that he believes his legacy has been cemented and, having carried the project into a new phase that has seen his Treble-winning side replaced by a younger, hungrier group who can challenge for the Champions League again, it is time to hand over the reins.

But what does feel new is some of the jockeying for position ahead of a managerial market that will see Manchester United, Chelsea and Real Madrid appoint new managers this summer. City and Liverpool – who retain confidence in Arne Slot for the moment – could yet join the table while there will be international jobs vacant after the World Cup.

An accomplished, experienced and trophy-winning manager like Maresca would be assumed by many to be in the mix for a many of those roles but – according to at least one top-flight executive involved in this space – he is “Manchester City’s man” if Guardiola goes.

There is a logic to it. As a former Guardiola apprentice at City, he is familiar with the structure and set-up at the Etihad. He worked in the academy and then as part of Guardiola’s backroom set-up for three years and is understood to be close to Hugo Viana, City’s sporting director.

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He is also keen on the role and available, even if the terms of his exit from Chelsea mean that there would need to be negotiations between City and the Blues to agree compensation. That is not expected to be a major factor preventing him from making the move if Guardiola goes, though.

It feels like the obvious move – but with Guardiola, you just never know. Earlier this year City were more confident he would stay until 2027 and he has reacted with incredulity to questions about his future in recent months. But the fact he is yet to nail his colours to the mast is probably not good news.

Maresca is not the only one waiting with bated breath.

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