Anthony Elanga joined Newcastle United from Nottingham Forest for £55million last summer.
Anthony Elanga celebrates scoring his team's second goal with teammates Ola Aina during the Premier League match between Nottingham Forest FC and Aston Villa FC at City Ground on December 14, 2024 in Nottingham, England. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)placeholder image
Anthony Elanga celebrates scoring his team's second goal with teammates Ola Aina during the Premier League match between Nottingham Forest FC and Aston Villa FC at City Ground on December 14, 2024 in Nottingham, England. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images) | Getty Images
Elanga joined Newcastle United from Forest for £55million last summer but is yet to truly endear himself to supporters, having scored just three goals and registered one assist in his debut campaign.
It is a significant drop off from the form he showed during his final season at Forest, where he scored six goals and provided 12 assists to help them finish 7th in the Premier League and qualify for the Europa League.
As such, Elanga is still held in high regard by the Forest faithful, who gave him a warm reception on his return to the City Ground with Newcastle earlier this month.
Nottingham Forest star responds to Anthony Elanga return question
It’s fair to say there is a large section of Forest fans who would take Elanga back in a heartbeat, and Aina has cheekily suggested that he will try and make it happen.
Responding to a comment from a Reds fans on one of his TikTok videos asking if he could “get Elanga back”, Aina replied: “Say less boss” with a shaking hands and a saluting emoji.
Anthony Elanga won’t be leaving Newcastle United
While it was very much a tongue-in-cheek response from Aina, we want to make clear that the likelihood of Elanga leaving Newcastle, never mind returning to Forest, is extremely low.
Elanga has had a tough campaign on Tyneside but Eddie Howe has repeatedly backed him to come good next season.
“Anthony had a really strong year last year for Nottingham Forest, a lot of goals, a lot of assists, a lot of goal contributions. We obviously came up against him a few times and I thought he was always a really strong performer against us, gave us problems in those games.
“He's obviously come to us and I think he's had some really good games for us. Obviously, there have been some games in there where he's found it a little bit more difficult, as every player would.
“I still believe the best is very much yet to come for Ant here. I think he's got some outstanding qualities that we really value and we really want in the team, but there'll be an element of frustration, I'm sure, for him that he hasn't shown his consistent best throughout the season.
“But as I said, players take different times to settle, different times to get into a full understanding of what we ask them to do.
“Again, he's a player that looks like he's benefiting from full-team training at the moment and I'm really confident that next season he'll have a really great year.”
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