Nottingham Forest’s late bid for Osasuna captain David Garcia has not gone down well with the La Liga outfit taking aim at their Premier League counterparts.
As Osasuna’s sporting director Braulio Vazquez points out, if Nottingham Forest were serious about luring David Garcia to the City Ground, well they simply should not have waited until the final 72 hours of the window to make their move.
Forest, Vazquez tells El Desmarque, made their interest known ‘three days before’ last week’s deadline. Osasuna may have been willing to consider offers earlier in the summer. But not in the final few days, when finding an adequate replacement for their captain and their most influential player would have been all-but impossible.
“An English club contacted us. It even seems disrespectful to me,” the director says. “It was a declaration of intentions of love. They wanted to sit down and talk to us three days before the closing (of the window) so that David Garcia could pass the medical examination.
“It’s surreal. I don’t think I had ever seen that before. Thank goodness we didn’t even answer!”
Nottingham Forest left it too late for David Garcia
With a release clause in Garcia’s contract, Nottingham Forest could have cut out the middle man by stumping up the £17 million required. Even if they had, however, Vazquez insists that Garcia would not have left his beloved Osasuna in the lurch, the one-time Spain international having spent his entire career at El Sadar.
“David himself knew that he would hurt us a lot in the planning if he left. His position was not to force anything,” Vazquez adds.
“So, since there was nothing, we couldn’t reject anything.”
Forest eventually brought in two new centre-halves before Friday’s 11pm cut-off, landing Murillo from Corinthians and Norwich City starlet Andrew Omobamidele after accepting defeat in their pursuit of David Garcia.
Both players could make their Forest debut after September’s international break.
Related Topics
MORE NOTTINGHAM FOREST STORIES
