Glenn Murray has quickly made an impact at Nottingham Forest - but his January transfer window could have panned out very differently.
The striker signed a short-term contract with the Reds on deadline day as he made the move from Brighton and Hove Albion, reuniting with Chris Hughton, who he worked with on the south coast.
Murray had spent the first half of the season on loan at Watford, but had been struggling for regular game time and was said to have been training on his own prior to his departure.
Hughton was keen to link up again with the front man, who marked his full debut for the club with a brace against Wycombe Wanderers.
But League One Plymouth Argyle tried to gatecrash his move to the City Ground, according to their manager.
“You better start (for Forest), Glenn, because I came in for you late on and you told me to go do one,” Argyle boss Ryan Lowe laughed, in an interview for the BBC which also had Murray as a guest.
“Do you know what my method was? I thought, right, he’d been locked up away at Watford, so I thought I’d give (his agent) a ring.
“I said, ‘what’s happening with Glenn?’. He went, ‘ah’ and then he started talking about something which I can’t speak about.
“I didn’t know where you were at, what you were doing, so don’t take it the wrong way, whether it’s disrespect or not - I thought, ‘he might do me for 12 weeks, get him firing; get 10 or 15 goals before the end of the season and then he can get an even better move in the Championship next year’.”
Murray grinned in response and said: “You know what, if this (Forest) hadn’t come around, I might have had to take you up on it, Lowey!”
Lowe added: “Someone told me you were living in Bournemouth. I was thinking, Bournemouth’s only an hour and 20 minutes (away), I’ll give him Mondays off, he can spend them with his mrs and kids!”
