Highly-rated Aston Villa midfielder John McGinn has revealed how close he was to joining Nottingham Forest earlier in his career.
The Scot signed for Villa from Hibernian for a fee of around £2.75million in 2017.
That has proved to be an outstanding piece of business, with Villa now valuing the 26-year-old at around £50million.
But his career could have panned out differently had he joined Forest, who were interested in McGinn back in 2016.
McGinn said he was being “pressurised” by Forest, then managed by Mark Warburnton, and praised his agent for standing firm.
“The summer before [joining Aston Villa], I was very close to going to Nottingham Forest on deadline day,” he told the Big Interview with Graham Hunter podcast.
“Ironically it was Mark Warburton who was in charge at the time. But on deadline day it was tough because you have to balance when this opportunity was coming around. I was loving my time at Hibs, but I wanted to test myself at the higher level.
“Full credit to my agent at the time, it would have been easy for him to do what I was being pressurised by Forest to do and push through the move.
“But it’s not in my nature, it’s not what I wanted to do and he was fully on-board with that.”
