Nottingham Forest’s recruitment has felt scattergun at the best of times in the past couple of years but Callum Hudson-Odoi’s arrival had a more obvious backstory. He worked with Steve Cooper, Nuno Espírito Santo’s predecessor, when England won the Under-17 World Cup in 2017 and so Cooper was influential in luring Hudson-Odoi, once a prodigious talent, to the City Ground.
Cooper may have departed but here Hudson-Odoi displayed some of the rich promise that elevated him into the Chelsea first team as a teenager, his fine strike on the cusp of half-time securing a point at Bournemouth, who ended the game with 10 men after Philip Billing was sent off with six minutes of normal time to play. Billing’s straight red card, for clipping Hudson-Odoi on the achilles on halfway, seemed harsh on first viewing but was undoubtedly crude. Nuno insisted it was unnecessary.
