Brennan Johnson returns to Forest having proven himself yet again (2024)

When Brennan Johnson was coming through Nottingham Forest’s academy, one of the many mantras drummed into him and the other players on an almost daily basis was: you can be the ones to lead this club back into the Premier League.

Johnson, Ryan Yates and Joe Worrall were three young men who turned those words of encouragement into a reality when they helped Forest win last year’s Championship play-off final. All three academy products were key figures in the drive to promotion that ended the club’s 23-year exile from the top flight.

Having grown up within a few hundred yards of the City Ground, with former Forest striker David as his dad, Johnson had been in the academy from the age of eight. It was his club — he had Forest in his veins.

Tonight (Friday), his father and mother Alison will take a familiar walk through West Bridgford to the stadium. Only the last part of the journey will be different, as they divert to sit among the away fans for the first time.

It will be a strange moment for them and, on the pitch, a strange moment for their 22-year-old son as well, as he walks out onto the pitch as a Tottenham Hotspur player.

Even his departure this summer was one final contribution to the cause. Forest were walking a fine financial fair play line before the £47.5million ($60.6m at the current exchange rate) sale on the final day of the window. The move to Spurs made sense for club and player alike — Forest raised much-needed revenue and Johnson, who had not been angling for a move, an opportunity to play for a club with Champions League aspirations.

Johnson will arrive back in Nottingham armed with the same fierce desire to prove his doubters wrong. He has made a habit of it.

When Johnson returned from a season on loan in League One with Lincoln City in the summer of 2021, Forest’s manager Chris Hughton debated whether to farm out the newly-turned 20-year-old again. He was, thankfully for the club, persuaded otherwise. After Hughton departed instead, when he was sacked early the following season, his replacement Steve Cooper was keen to nurture his fellow Welshman’s potential.

Having proved he could cut it in the third tier of English football, scoring 11 goals as Lincoln made the play-off final, Johnson delivered in the second as well. He contributed 19 goals and 10 assists to Forest’s promotion season. After that, there were some, including a few Forest fans, who questioned whether he could make the even bigger step up to the top flight, but he took that in his stride as well, with eight goals and three assists to help Cooper’s side swerve relegation.

Now, three months after his move to north London, Johnson already looks at home in the demanding surroundings of Ange Postecoglou’s Spurs side.

“I was watching Tottenham play Manchester City (at the start of this month) the other day. He was up against Kyle Walker,” says Gary Brazil, the man who oversaw much of Johnson’s development in his days as head of the Forest academy. “Nobody gets much out of Kyle — Kylian Mbappe couldn’t get a yard past him at the World Cup when France played England. But, against City, Brennan drives, takes that yard off Walker and delivers the cross to create a goal for Son Heung-min.

“He always had the ability to create and score. Through the age groups until playing in the Premier League now, he is just one of those players who can always find a way.

“It is lovely to watch somebody enjoy doing something that they are very, very good at, and doing it very well. The way Tottenham play will suit him. He has elite quality. He has elite pace. He also still has a lot to come — we are still talking about his potential at this stage.”

Players rarely depart with any kind of fanfare. But when Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis wrote a letter to fans after a summer window that included another 13 arrivals at the City Ground, it felt telling that he made a point of mentioning Johnson.

“Brennan epitomises all that is great about football,” Marinakis wrote. “A young boy playing for his local team, fulfilling his dreams and growing not just as a footballer, but as a human being. In moving to Tottenham Hotspur, he has also provided his boyhood club with the financial means to reinvest and continue to grow. We thank him for being part of our family and giving so much of himself to us.”

The reception Johnson gets from the home fans tonight will be interesting. It should be a warm one, given everything he did for the club and his roots.

“It will be weird for him to come back,” Brazil says. “I hope and imagine that Forest fans give him a good welcome. They should, because they should be aware of just how much the club means to him. That will never go away with Brennan, or his family. They will remain massive supporters of Forest.

“It will be odd for him to play against ‘his’ club. But he is a professional. He will want to perform well and he will want to win.”

Cooper’s challenge has been to find somebody to fill the void created by the loss of Johnson. It is a question Forest are still to properly find an answer to.

Anthony Elanga has had some electric moments down the left since his summer arrival from Manchester United. Morgan Gibbs-White, another young player with significant potential, forged a good understanding with Johnson last season — but has not always looked as comfortable when asked to fill the right-sided role that Johnson would occupy.

Taiwo Awoniyi is still sidelined with the groin injury that’s kept him out for the past month, so Forest must find an alternative source of attacking threat — all while coming up with a way to keep Johnson quiet if he plays.

“I understood why the club sold Brennan,” Cooper says. “It was something we knew would probably happen, and that we were planning for. I know he has ambition. It’ll be good to see him after the game.

“We know Brennan’s threats and we have to deal with him being on the pitch in a different way to what we have been used to.”

Brazil, now head of recruitment in the England national team setup, says Johnson’s enthusiasm for Forest was evident even when he was just nine or 10 years old, playing on a Sunday morning. But there was one particular moment when the staff realised they had a potential star on their hands.

“I remember (coaches) Chris Cohen and Jimmy Gilligan coming into my office after one training session,” says Brazil. “Jimmy said, ‘That boy could be anything’. I just grinned because you always just wanted to hear that, particularly from people whose judgement you trust.

“Brennan had a significant knee injury when he was 15 and was out for the best part of a year. He had always looked technically very good, but he had not been the strongest. When he came back, his pace started to show, he became quicker. Your eyes would light up when you saw him. He started to play in the under-21s. He would have moments in games where you would be thinking, ‘Oh, wow… go on, son’.

“Duelling was always a big thing. You always watched to see how players did in duels. And he would go by people almost as if they were not there. We would encourage players like Brennan to get high and wide and try to take on defenders one-on-one. Brennan thrived.

“Now you see him doing it against Kyle Walker and you know that Tottenham have a very good player on their hands. He can be anything he wants.”

(Photos: Getty Images)

Nottingham Forest writer for The Athletic. Previously spent 25 years at the Nottingham Post. Unsurprisingly, Nottingham born and bred. Meet me by the left lion.