{"id":764779,"date":"2026-07-15T18:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T18:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/764779\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T18:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T18:00:16","slug":"nottingham-forest-set-to-sign-xaver-schlager-after-midfielders-rb-leipzig-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/764779\/","title":{"rendered":"Nottingham Forest set to sign Xaver Schlager after midfielder\u2019s RB Leipzig exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nottingham Forest are set to sign Xaver Schlager on a free transfer after the midfielder left RB Leipzig at the end of last season.<\/p>\n

Leipzig had tried to renew Schlager\u2019s contract before his exit, while the 28-year-old had attracted interest from top clubs across Europe before choosing Forest, where he will sign a two-year contract with the option of an additional 12 months.<\/p>\n

Schlager will undergo a medical in Nottingham this week ahead of joining the squad at pre-season for their training camp in Portugal.<\/p>\n

Before his exit, Schlager was Leipzig vice-captain, making 108 appearances for the club after joining from Wolfsburg in 2022, and will provide leadership and experience in Forest\u2019s squad. He has also been a key member of the Austria national team, impressing as he started all four of their World Cup games as they exited in the round of 32.<\/p>\n

Forest have seen midfielder Elliot Anderson depart for Manchester City in a \u00a3116million ($155m) deal, and had expressed interest in Lucas Bergvall of Tottenham Hotspur<\/a> as a potential replacement.<\/p>\n

Schlager will supplement a Forest midfield department which also includes Ibrahim Sangare, Nicolas Dominguez, Ryan Yates, Morgan Gibbs-White and James McAtee.<\/p>\n

Schlager is in line to be Forest\u2019s first arrival of the summer, as well as the first signing under new head coach Oliver Glasner. The Austrian signed a three-year contract to replace Vitor Pereira earlier this month, having left Crystal Palace at the end of the 2025-26 campaign.<\/p>\n

The Athletic reported earlier this week<\/a> that Glasner, like Pereira, will have a role to play in Forest\u2019s recruitment this summer, with the club previously targeting a right-back, a central defender and a central midfielder.<\/p>\n

Schlager came through the academy at Red Bull Salzburg before moving to Wolfsburg \u2014 where he was brought in during Glasner\u2019s first season in charge of the German Bundesliga club \u2014 in 2019. He has 55 caps for Austria and played 150 games in the German top flight for Wolfsburg and Leipzig.<\/p>\n

One of the Bundesliga\u2019s most well-rounded midfielders<\/p>\n

Analysis by German football writer Seb Stafford-Bloor<\/p>\n

Schlager is a tough, combative midfielder and, for a long time, was one of the most important figures in the Leipzig dressing room. He\u2019s a tackler and a ball-winner, but not without the technical ability required to be valuable in possession.<\/p>\n

Leipzig\u2019s style of play is all about ball progression, meaning that there\u2019s no room in their formation \u2014 either a 4-2-3-1 or more recently a 4-3-3 \u2014 for a simple stopper who can only play sideways.<\/p>\n

Maybe branding him as a complete midfielder in the wake of Anderson\u2019s sale would be to oversell him \u2014 he\u2019s not Anderson\u2019s equal. But, when fit, he is one of the most rounded players in his position in the Bundesliga and had he not suffered two separate anterior cruciate ligament injuries in his career \u2014 the first in 2021 and the second in 2024 \u2014 then he would have played at a very high level.<\/p>\n

\"Anderson<\/p>\n

\n After two years at Forest, Anderson left the club for City earlier this summer (Mike Egerton\/PA Images via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

His fitness issues seem to be behind him now. Schlager played well over 2,000 minutes in all competitions last season. So, on a free and with a gap to fill, it\u2019s hard to think that this is anything other than a smart move. He\u2019ll be popular and will relish the attritional, battleground nature of English football, and he has more than enough ability to be a real asset to Glasner, who managed him at Wolfsburg for two years.<\/p>\n

An experienced option for Forest<\/p>\n

Analysis by football writer Nick Miller<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an obvious hole to fill in the Forest midfield after the record departure of Anderson to City.<\/p>\n

Schlager won\u2019t replace Anderson directly in terms of his quality, but he will certainly add an experienced option for Glasner into the heart of midfield. Given Glasner will be giving his existing players a crash course in his 3-4-2-1 formation, someone he trusts to fit in there will be very welcome for Forest\u2019s new coach.<\/p>\n

It could spell bad news for either Dominguez or Yates. They\u2019re not exactly the same type of players as Schlager, but they have been the go-to options for a combative midfielder over the last few years. But Glasner has no relationship or loyalty to either of them, so assuming another midfielder will be arriving at some stage, one of those previous stalwarts might find their game time limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nottingham Forest are set to sign Xaver Schlager on a free transfer after the midfielder left RB Leipzig…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[6793,9872,2732,26696,403,99],"class_list":["post-764779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-austria","tag-bundesliga","tag-nottingham-forest","tag-rb-leipzig","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}