After a record-breaking campaign last season, Chris Wood could hardly have dreamt of a better start to the new campaign.
Last year, the New Zealander scored 20 Premier League goals; his previous best single-season tally in the top-flight was 14.
Well, the 33-year-old showed little sign of slowing day in Nottingham Forest’s opener on Sunday, scoring twice during a 3-1 victory over Brentford at the City Ground.
Nevertheless, as the Garibaldi Reds prepare for a first European campaign in three decades, Nuno Espírito Santo will need to add squad depth, something he has done this week, following the arrivals of Omari Hutchinson, James McAtee and Arnaud Kalimuendo.
Now though, do Forest have a prolific striker in their sights, one who scored even more goals than Wood last season?
Nottingham Forest's need for squad depth
Last season, as Nottingham Forest upset the odds to qualify for Europe, they largely benefited from playing just one game a week throughout the entire campaign, playing only eight mid-week fixtures.
This enabled Nuno to deploy very familiar starting lineups, with 12 players racking up more than 2,200 minutes across all competitions, while seven accumulated in excess of 3,000 minutes.
However, this time round, Forest will have eight Europa League games to content with from mid-September to late-January, with Roma, Real Betis, Stuttgart, Olympique Lyonnais, Porto and Feyenoord among the tougher of their potential opponents.
Thus, as they search for greater attacking options, a report by TEAMtalk claims that Forest are considering a move to sign Celtic striker Daizen Maeda, adding that Fulham and Brentford are also interested.
They claim that the Japanese international, who notably scored for the Samurai Blue against Croatia during the most recent World Cup, would be “very open” to a move to the Premier League, valued at £25m by the Scottish champions, which would equal their record sale.
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So, could he become the very first Japanese player to call the City Ground home, following in the footsteps of Neil Lennon and Pierre van Hooijdonk, who’ve previously swapped Parkhead for the River Trent?
What Daizen Maeda would bring to Nottingham Forest
Since joining Celtic from Yokohama F. Marinos in January 2022, brought to Scotland by Ange Postecoglou, Maeda has had an enormous impact at Parkhead.
In total, he has scored 63 goals in 161 appearances in hoops, but his form improved astronomically last season.
Maeda scored 33 goals across all competitions, four of which came in the Champions League, the first Celtic player to score four or more in a single European Cup campaign since Joe Craig in 1977/78.
In fact, across Europe’s top-nine ranked leagues, using last season’s UEFA association coefficient ranking, very few players across the continent bagged more goals.
Viktor Gyökeres
Sporting CP
54
Kylian Mbappé
Real Madrid
44
Robert Lewandowski
Barcelona
42
Harry Kane
Bayern Munich
41
Serhou Guirassy
Borussia Dortmund
38
Ousmane Dembélé
Paris Saint-Germain
35
Raphinha
Barcelona
34
Erling Braut Håland
Manchester City
34
Mohamed Salah
Liverpool
34
Daizen Maeda
Celtic
33
Sem Steijn
FC Twente
31
Vangelis Pavlidis
Benfica
30
As the table documents, Maeda ranked among Europe’s very best in terms of goals across all competitions last season, just one behind both Erling Braut Håland and Mohamed Salah, while players higher up the list, namely Harry Kane, Serhou Guirassy and Ousmane Dembélé, benefited from their team’s Club World Cup participation.
Maeda’s 33-goal haul also placed him ahead of the aforementioned Wood, who ended 2024/25 with 20 goals across all fronts, with that prolific quality made even more impressive considering that the former Yokohama man typically lined up off the left flank.
Wood has started the campaign in the same way he finished the last – scoring goals – but Forest’s latest transfer target would, believe it or not, offer an upgrade.
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers described Maeda’s pressing as “incredible” and “unbelievable”, elsewhere labelling him a “machine” and a “physical beast”.
Like Wood, Maeda’s work rate has always been eye-catching, ever since he first arrived in Glasgow, with former teammate Joe Hart asserting that he is the “best in the world” when it comes to out-of-possession work among forwards.
Now though, the Japanese striker has the end product to go with this, ready to take the next step in his development, possibly to the Premier League, which would surely boost his chances of playing a major role for Japan at the World Cup.
Maeda’s pace, energy and work-rate would slot perfectly into Nuno’s Nottingham Forest team, and he could be an invaluable addition ahead of a long, gruelling season that they hope will culminate in a Europa League Final in İstanbul.