Done Deal: Forest Land Daniel Munoz for £22m as Glasner Rebuilds His Palace Blueprint

Nottingham Forest have completed the £22m signing of Daniel Munoz from Crystal Palace, and it is one of those deals that makes immediate sense the moment you see who the manager is. The Colombia right-back has signed a three-year contract at the City Ground and links back up with Oliver Glasner, the coach he won the FA Cup and the Conference League alongside at Selhurst Park. He could go straight into the side against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday.

The deal, confirmed

Forest have completed the £22m transfer of Daniel Munoz from Crystal Palace, with the 30-year-old signing a three-year deal. He leaves Selhurst Park after two and a half years in which he made 109 appearances and scored 11 goals — a return that tells you plenty about how far up the pitch he plays. The move follows the £50m arrival of Liam Delap, the club’s record signing.

Munoz arrived in England from Genk, where he won the Belgian Cup, and became a fixture of Glasner’s Palace side almost immediately. The two men won two trophies together. That history is the whole point of the transfer: Forest have not bought a player who needs bedding in, they have bought a player whose manager can name his job description without looking at a report.

What Munoz actually gives Forest

Munoz is a wing-back rather than a conventional full-back, and the numbers back that up. Eleven goals in 109 Premier League appearances is a striker’s habit in a defender’s shirt — he arrives in the box, he attacks the back post, he does not stop his run on the halfway line. In a Glasner system built on aggressive wide runners, that is the single most valuable trait he could bring.

The trade-off is exposure. Play a full-back that high and you need the structure behind him to hold, which is the balancing act Glasner spent two seasons solving at Palace. Forest have bought the solution and the problem in the same signing, and the manager knows exactly which is which.

A serious summer at the City Ground

Delap at £50m, Munoz at £22m: that is over £70m committed in one window, and it is not the spending of a club planning for a scrap at the bottom. Forest are building a squad designed to compete for the upper half and, realistically, for European qualification. Windows like this change what supporters are entitled to expect.

The Tottenham fixture on Saturday now carries an extra layer. If Munoz starts, it will be a debut against one of the sides Forest need to be measuring themselves against, in a stadium where a new right-back gets tested early and often. There are gentler introductions to a football club.

Where this leaves Crystal Palace

Palace bank £22m for a 30-year-old they bought for considerably less, which is good business by any accounting measure. Selling a first-choice full-back at that age, at that price, is the kind of decision recruitment departments are supposed to make.

The football side is harder. Munoz was not a squad player, he was an entire flank, and he was part of the group that delivered the club’s FA Cup and Conference League success. Replacing the minutes is one job. Replacing a player whose manager has just walked off with him to a direct rival is another, and Palace have limited time to do either.

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