2 reasons Ola Aina must decline Everton offer to stay at Nottingham Forest

Super Eagles right-back Ola Aina has emerged as a late Everton transfer target as the Premier League window winds down to Tuesday’s 11 pm deadline, Afrik-Foot reports.

The interest from the Toffees is real but complicated. David Moyes’ side had been negotiating a deal for Aina as part of a broader package involving Everton youngster Harrison Armstrong moving in the opposite direction, but the Armstrong element collapsed after fan backlash at Goodison Park.

That decision left Everton scrambling to salvage a right-back solution with Seamus Coleman retired and Nathan Patterson injury-prone.

Aina is under contract at Nottingham Forest until June 2028 following the extension he signed last summer, and the club have publicly stated they have absolutely no intention of letting him go before the window shuts.

Two reasons Ola Aina must reject Everton move

1. Nottingham Forest offer him a stage Everton simply cannot match

The first reason is about the level of the football on offer, not the depth chart.

Nottingham Forest reached the Europa League semi-final last season, and remain positioned as a club expecting to challenge for the upper half of the Premier League rather than simply surviving, and their business in the transfer market this summer has shown so.

They’ve brought in Oliver Glasner, a manager well-versed in winning trophies, and brought in key players like Xavier Schlager and Liam Delap.

Everton, by contrast, finished last season without European qualification and enters the new campaign as a project club still trying to build an identity under David Moyes.

For a 29-year-old defender approaching the latter stages of his prime, that difference is important.

Aina played in the Europa League knockout rounds for Forest last season, has already banked another top-flight point at Anfield inside the first two weeks of this campaign, and features week in and week out at a club with rich history.

Everton offer a Premier League shirt and nothing beyond it, at least until the Toffees rebuild what a European qualification path might look like.

The Super Eagles dimension only sharpens the point. Aina is a 48-cap Nigerian international whose national-team standing benefits directly from playing regularly at a top club

2. The Daniel Muñoz signing

The second reason is that the panic reading of Forest’s £22 million capture of Daniel Muñoz from Crystal Palace, framed as an immediate demotion for Aina, is not the only reading available.

Welcome to Nottingham Forest, Daniel Muñoz. ✍️ pic.twitter.com/jvbcPsdMxU

— Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) August 31, 2026

Yes, Muñoz has a history with head coach Oliver Glasner from their time together at Crystal Palace, and yes, the Colombian’s stamina and wing-back profile fit the Glasner blueprint.

However, Forest are a club that will play a lot of games in the Premier League, and no single right-back plays every one of those minutes.

Rotation, injury cover and tactical variation will guarantee Aina a steady thread of first-team involvement, particularly given the physical demands of the English top-flight.

His most recent outing at Anfield underlined the point. Aina played the full 86 minutes before being substituted in the 2-2 draw with Liverpool, earning a 7.0 FotMob rating that was the fourth-highest in the Forest starting eleven, and shrugged off a first-half yellow card with the composure of a defender playing at the top of his game.

That is not a player being quietly written off by his manager; that is a player Glasner still trusts in the biggest fixtures.

Leaving now, for a club whose ambition ceiling this season is finishing above 12th, would waste that momentum.

The rational move for a defender still trusted in Anfield-level fixtures is to stay, absorb the competition from Muñoz, and reassess in January or next summer from a position of strength.