Elliot Anderson was expecting to sign a new contract at Newcastle United last June.
Talks had opened during the season’s closing weeks and were progressing quickly, both parties keen to refresh a deal last updated two years previously. Anderson was confident he would remain at the club he first joined at eight years old. His head coach, Eddie Howe, privately spoke of him as a future England international. Then, for a couple of weeks, negotiations went quiet.
By July, Anderson was a Nottingham Forest player.
He had been on holiday with his family when the call from Howe arrived. The Newcastle head coach explained the situation — to prevent the club from receiving a sizeable points deduction for breaching profit and sustainability rules (PSR), players would have to be sold. Winger Yankuba Minteh was the first. Anderson would be the second.
“Do I really have to go?” Anderson asked. It was explained to him that by departing, Anderson would help save his boyhood club. He flew back from holiday to complete the deal on June 30.
“The selling of Elliot breaks my heart,” said one senior figure.
It broke Anderson’s, too. He had dreamt of helping Newcastle by scoring goals in huge matches — not by serving as a financial makeweight. In turning Newcastle’s accounts from red to black and white, his shirt had to change in the other direction.
“It was very sad,” Anderson told BBC Football Focus last week. “Obviously, you never know you’re going to join a club and play, so in my head at the time, I didn’t know it was going to go the way it has. It was a tough one to take. I was really settled there and I didn’t really see it coming.”
But sometimes leaving is best, even if it does not appear obvious at the time. Since joining Nottingham Forest, Anderson’s career has blossomed.
The 22-year-old won Forest’s player of the month award in August, his first month at the club, and repeated the feat in January. He has started 20 of 25 league matches, scored his first Premier League goal, and been an integral part of Forest’s run to third in the table.
In short, he is one of the division’s form midfielders — and with Thomas Tuchel’s first squad due to be announced next month, he could be in line for senior England honours.
Before that, however, is a first trip back to Newcastle — where his boyhood club trail his adopted team by six points in the race for the Champions League. It is the most significant game of Anderson’s season so far. This is the inside story of his past 12 months.
Forest’s scouts had admired Anderson from afar for several seasons — right back to his time on loan at Bristol Rovers — but never thought the midfielder would be available. As a Newcastle academy graduate, they were aware he had no desire to leave the north east.
But with Newcastle in desperate need of PSR help, they opportunistically entered the race — and right from the start, felt as if they had secured a Champions League-level player. His arrival cost the club £35m ($44m), but with reserve keeper Odysseas Vlachodimos going the other way for £20m, the net fee of £15m represented incredible value.
Anderson’s 2023-24 season at Newcastle had been disrupted by a frustrating back injury — a stress fracture which ruled him out between October and February, causing him to miss a large chunk of the season. He did not play for more than four months from October to February, including virtually all of Newcastle’s Champions League campaign.
Forest were determined to integrate him carefully — though their plan was almost disrupted by a horror challenge he experienced against Millwall during pre-season in July. He avoided serious injury and sang ‘Stand By Me’ to his team-mates as his initiation that week. Anderson had signed three weeks earlier, but this was his true welcome to Forest.
Still, the club did not want to overplay him and though he started nine of 14 Premier League games, he only completed 90 minutes once. Nuno Espirito Santo explained his reasoning clearly to Anderson, who understood what the club were attempting to do. Privately, Anderson has expressed his appreciation of this management.
But at Manchester United in early December, he played the entire 90 minutes and was instrumental in a 3-2 win that kickstarted a run of six consecutive league victories. Anderson started each of them and has only been withdrawn before 80 minutes on two occasions since.
Forest’s plan has worked and Anderson’s physicality has been on full display this season. One particular passage against Aston Villa in December shows his development — he dispossesses Matty Cash in a one-on-one duel before bypassing Amadou Onana and crossing for Anthony Elanga to score a stoppage-time winner.
ANTHONY ELANGA SCORES IN INJURY-TIME! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/saAjkQETAA
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 14, 2024
Newcastle felt as if his loan to Bristol Rovers had a major impact on his physical development — even seeing him as the closest to a like-for-like replacement for Joelinton towards the end of the season when the Brazilian was injured.
Speaking to The Times in November, Anderson explained how his upbringing had helped inject strength into a slight frame.
“It’s very tough physically, being played against people older than you,” he said. “I was quite a small kid, so I definitely had a few stages where I started doubting my physicality. I got clattered quite a lot, the little one always gets picked on. It’s definitely made me tougher. My two brothers are both older than me and they used to kick the s*** out of me as well.”
There is still that aspect to his game — a pest who nips between bigger bodies to regain possession — which is reflected statistically.
The ‘true tackles’ metric calculates tackles won, challenges lost, and fouls committed, adjusting per 1,000 opposition touches to see how often a player is attempting to make tackles relative to how often the opposing team have the ball. In simple terms — how likely is a player to break up an opposition attack?
Not only does Anderson attempt a high number of ‘true’ tackles, but his success rate of 60 per cent places him amongst the league’s elite central midfielders. His rate of ball recoveries — 11.5 per 1,000 opposition touches — places him third in the league.
The one thing Anderson lacks is raw pace — with team-mate Neco Williams joking that “when he runs, it’s like he’s towing a caravan”. The pair have become close, travelling to a ski resort alongside Elanga, Morgan Gibbs-White and their partners over the winter break.
It demonstrates how quickly Anderson has settled into a new dressing room — but he has also been asked to adapt to a new role.
He has generally played as part of a double-pivot as a No 6 for Forest — positioned far deeper than he was at Newcastle, where he operated as a left-sided No 8 or left-winger. Howe never trusted Anderson to play the deeper role in his 4-3-3 — although this would have involved him playing as a sole No 6 — where Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali have typically played.
When Forest signed him, they were investing in a player rather than a specific profile — recognising his versatility and ability to play across formations. He played three roles in the first two games of pre-season alone.
While Anderson has a licence to roam in Nuno’s usual 4-2-3-1, he was also used on the left of a narrow three-man midfield in a 5-3-2 against Brighton. The switch worked, with Anderson key in a 7-0 win.
Forest have been impressed with his mentality in training — playing the ball quickly and demanding it back, desperate to get a return pass within three seconds.
“He’s one of those old-fashioned types who just loves the ball,” one member of the Forest staff remarked.
When Anderson signed for Forest, one central question was how he would play alongside Gibbs-White, with his previous career at Newcastle suggesting a player who liked to operate in similar areas. In practice, that has not proved an issue — the pair dovetail effectively, with Anderson’s out-of-possession ability even freeing up Gibbs-White to be more dangerous in possession.
Anderson’s form has long-term benefits, too. With Gibbs-White still a potential departee in the summer, Forest rate Anderson highly enough to consider him as a long-term option in the No 10 role, such is his versatility.
That role requires output and though Anderson has produced match-winning assists, he had to endure a long wait for his first Premier League goal.
Ironically, he had appeared to open his account for Newcastle against Forest back in March 2023 with a looping header, only for it to be ruled out controversially for offside after a VAR check.
It took almost another two years for Anderson to finally score, a lag he described as a “weight on his shoulders” to the BBC, especially given how prolific he was during his youth career and loan to Bristol Rovers. But that first goal eventually came against Southampton last month as he drove towards the edge of the box before firing in.
“The day before in training, I’d scored quite a few and people were saying to me, ‘I don’t know how you haven’t scored yet’,” he told Football Focus. “Sometimes I don’t get into the positions to shoot. When I got the opportunity, I just thought, ‘Why not?’.”
Anderson’s form has raised the possibility of higher honours, while large European clubs are keeping tabs. Senior international recognition may not be far away.
Eligible for Scotland through his father, Iain, Anderson was called into camp by Steve Clarke in September 2023, having played for the country’s youth teams. However, he withdrew from that squad through injury — and subsequently held meetings with the English Football Association to discuss his future. Now, having played for England Under-21s, he has pledged his international future to England.
Tuchel watched him play in Forest’s 3-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers in January and is understood to rate the midfielder. Previous young midfielders in England’s squads — such as Kobbie Mainoo and Adam Wharton — have suffered from either injuries or dips in form this season.
As Newcastle and Forest prepare to face each other on Sunday, the team sheets will provide a reminder that despite the hurried circumstances of his departure, Anderson’s move appears to have worked out for all parties.
Despite his form, it is a strange quirk that Anderson might not have made Newcastle’s first-choice midfield trio this season — made up of Tonali, Guimaraes and Joelinton — though perhaps Joelinton’s injury for Sunday’s game would have afforded him a rare start.
Selling the move, Howe admitted to Anderson that though he did not want to lose him, the player would enter 2024-25 as fourth-choice midfielder at best, competing with Joe Willock and Joelinton for the left-sided No 8 role. The emergence of the similarly versatile Lewis Miley, who profited from Anderson’s absence last season with a glut of minutes, softened the blow of his departure.
This time last year, there was an anxiety at Newcastle that Guimaraes could leave in the summer, but he stayed and, with Tonali settling into the No 6 role over recent months, their midfield is still in sound shape.
In contrast, though it was far more of a wrench for Howe to lose Anderson than Minteh — who had never been in the first-team squad — Newcastle are better stocked at No 8 than on the right wing.
But ultimately, the concerns of long-term squad planning were transcended on June 30 by a more pressing concern. The equation was simple — Anderson needed to leave to save Newcastle’s season.
Minutes before the deadline, there was a concrete possibility that the deal would fall through. Conversations were held at ownership level to hasten the process, with Jamie Reuben and Evangelos Marinakis locked in discussions, alongside Newcastle CEO Darren Eales and Anderson’s agent, David Manasseh.
Newcastle had initially wanted Elanga to go the other way as part of the deal, but Forest were reluctant to sell — a decision justified by the winger’s excellent season — and the two sides could not agree a fee. Instead, Newcastle had to settle for Vlachodimos, having held far less of an interest in the goalkeeper.
Though those at Newcastle find some bittersweetness in Anderson’s outstanding form at Forest, it rankles that they only received £15m net because of their desperation rather than the £45m they believed was a true reflection of his ability and potential.
But as the deadline moved closer, they had no concrete offers except Forest — there had only been tentative interest from other clubs. The offer was accepted. Eight months on, it is clear there would be much more of a market for Anderson. Forest were simply bold enough to move first.
Unlike some transfers, there is no animosity here. Newcastle fans applauded Anderson during their 3-1 win in Nottingham last November. In turn, it did not take the fans at the City Ground long to embrace a song coined at St James’ Park — rechristening him as Geordie Maradona, 160 miles further south.
Qualifying for the Champions League brings pride, adventure and excitement, but it is an inescapable part of modern football, and arguably a sad one, that the most pressing concern can be financial. If Anderson helps Forest into its group stages, the prize money will help the squad reach another echelon entirely.
Newcastle, meanwhile, need qualification to continue building and to avoid regression. Win on Sunday and they are another step closer to ensuring they do not need to sell any more Elliot Andersons.
(Top photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
