Coventry City & Blackburn Rovers must be surprised at £20m Nottingham Forest move | OneFootball

Coventry City and Blackburn Rovers supporters will be surprised by the £20 million bid placed by Nottingham Forest for Yasin Ayari.

Towards the close of the January transfer window, Nottingham Forest had a bid rejected by Brighton and Hove Albion for Sweden international midfielder Yasin Ayari.

It is believed that Forest placed a bid in the region of £20 million but that was not deemed enough by the Seagulls, and this will likely come as a major surprise to the supporters of both Blackburn Rovers and Coventry City.

Not only would the fact that a Premier League club, who have aspirations of winning a European trophy this season, believe they should be moving for Ayari come as a shock; but also the fact that a £20 million offer was deemed not good enough by Brighton either.

Ayari has established himself as a regular in the Brighton midfield over the last couple of seasons, under the management of former St Pauli boss Fabian Hurzeler.

He is also the fulcrum of a Sweden side that boasts some real stellar talents such as Alexander Isak, Viktor Gyokeres, Dejan Kulusevski and Anthony Elanga, with Graham Potter at the helm.

At the age of just 22 and now starring regularly for a team famed for its development and identification of young talent in Brighton, Ayari appears to have the world at his feet.

The former AIK man took a bit of time to settle into things at the AMEX Stadium and a couple of underwhelming stints in the Championship didn’t suggest anything of what has been to come.

Yasin Ayari struggled to break in at Coventry City

In the 2023/24 campaign, following their defeat to Luton Town on penalties in the Championship play-off final, Coventry were expecting to launch another sustained challenge for promotion to the Premier League.

The Sky Blues, with Mark Robins still in charge, also had a fair bit of money to play with after the sales of Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer to Sporting CP and Sheffield United, respectively.

Having been busy in the early part of the summer with fees shelled out on the likes of Ellis Simms, Tatsuhiro Sakamoto, Bobby Thomas, Milan van Ewijk and Haji Wright; one of the final additions, almost the icing on the cake, was the loan acquisition of Ayari from Brighton.

Having had success by dealing with the Seagulls in the past, like Gyokeres, there were high expectations for the technically gifted and industrious young midfielder.

However, after just half a season with a then underperforming Coventry side that would eventually rally in the second-half of the season and flirt with a play-off place, Ayari struggled to make a mark.

He made just six starts in his 13 appearances for City before being named as an unused substitute in seven successive matches ahead of a recall from Brighton due to a lack of game time.

Yasin Ayari again then struggled at Blackburn Rovers

His recall was followed by an immediate loan out to Coventry’s Championship rivals Blackburn Rovers, who were involved in the Championship relegation battle, eventually staving off the drop on the final day of the season with a win away at champions Leicester City at the King Power Stadium.

That was a game in which John Eustace, who replaced the sacked Jon Dahl Tomasson just a few weeks after Ayari’s arrival at Ewood Park, brought Ayari off the bench with a few minutes to go to help see out the game.

That was just his tenth appearance for the Lancastrians, with just two starts in that time, often playing as a holding midfielder but even as a so-called ‘number ten’ on occasion.

Blackburn, again, like Coventry, had had success with loanees in the recent past and especially ones from Brighton, such as Jan Paul van Hecke, but Ayari just didn’t click with either side.

Perhaps misprofiled by different managers or just way behind in his development than they’d initially anticipated, those that hadn’t followed his career after his departure from the respective clubs will be stunned to see him the subject of a big money transfer saga between Premier League clubs.