Nottingham Forest head coach Mark Warburton has told the Nottingham Post that if Gboly Aribiyi wants to be in the first team, he’ll have to earn his spot on the training ground.
The 22-year-old winger was a star player for Chesterfield and it was seen as a coup when Nottingham Forest beat many of their Sky Bet Championship rivals to his signature during the January transfer window. However despite all of his potential, he is yet to make his debut for Forest having been pushed down the pecking order by the amount of attacking talent currently contracted to the club.
But Aribiyi has been impressing for Forest’s U23s and is looking to make his debut before the end of the season. And Warburton has now said that if the American wants to do that, he’ll have to work hard on the training ground to show he deserves to be on the hallowed turf of the City Ground.
He said: “I spoke to him and the question for him is, ‘why haven’t you featured?’. Is he not doing enough?,”
“You want players not to look for excuses, but to find solutions to problems.”
“Why are we not playing him? What must he do better? That is what you want. You want players to knock on the door and ask what they must do better to get into the side.”
“Train hard every day, do your gym work, look at the analysis – want more. If you do that, you will play. But you have to push. If you do not push, you will not get anywhere.
“There are a lot of players at the club, it is a big squad. If everyone is fit, you are going to have 10, 12 or even 14 players not even getting on the coach to go to games.
“That is the nature of things at the moment. You just have to be honest with the players, because it is nothing personal.”
