This time last year, James McAtee should have been on the crest of a wave.Barely two weeks after captaining England’s under-21s to success in the European Championships, he was completing the final details of a £30million move to Nottingham Forest.McAtee had come through in the same generation of talent as Phil Foden and Cole Palmer at the Etihad Campus. And, when they persuaded him to sign on the dotted line, there were people at Forest who believed he arrived armed with similar potential.A sublime left foot and an almost swaggering, confident presence on the ball, the 23-year-old had always looked the part, even from the moment he first caught the eye of Pep Guardiola when he had only just become a teenager.A move to the City Ground was meant to give him the platform to demonstrate those talents more regularly. Under all four head coaches who came and went at Forest last season, the same thing was always true — McAtee would constantly be one of the most impressive figures on the training ground. But it was rarely reflected on the pitch.Nuno Espirito Santo, Ange Postecoglou, Sean Dyche and Vitor Pereira all struggled to fit him into the team.McAtee was seen as a player in a similar mould to Palmer or Foden, a young man who was at his best in the final third, somebody with the quality to, one day, make the step up to the senior international side, potentially. He was man of the match in the 3-2 win over Germany that secured victory for an England under-21 side that also included Elliot Anderson.Yet, with Morgan Gibbs-White often Forest’s most influential player in the number 10 role taking centre stage, McAtee was limited to a bit part last season. He started only two Premier League games, while coming off the bench 12 times.But the latest Forest head coach believes McAtee could be a potential solution to a different problem — as somebody who, while a different player, could help to fill the void left by Anderson.James McAtee vies with Eduardo Quaresma of Sporting CP for the ball possession during a pre-season friendly (Carlos Rodrigues/Getty Images)Forest have not given up their efforts to sign a more direct replacement for the man who joined Manchester City for £116m in July. Top of their list is City’s Dutch international Tijjani Reijnders. Forest hold a serious interest in the 28-year-old, who cost £46.5million in June 2025.