Name:
Wes Morgan

Position:
Defender

Born:
21 January 1984, Nottingham

Signed from:
Academy, April 2003

Debut:
13 August 2003 vs Port Vale (Vale Park)
Carling [League] Cup 1st Round - DREW 0-0 (won on penalties)

Highly-rated (though perhaps too highly rated by some Forest fans) young defender of considerable physical presence; he is built like the proverbial brick outhouse - and in his early career was often about as mobile as one, too!

Wes rose rapidly through the Academy ranks and received rave reviews both in Forest's Reserves set-up and during a period on loan at Kidderminster Harriers. He broke into the first team in 2003-04 and had an outstanding first year (in a pretty crap season, too). Many of us remember our first real sighting of him - executing a thunderous tackle on Jari Litmanen of Ajax in a pre-season friendly in July 2003; Wes emerged on his arse, but with the ball, and Litmanen (a great player by any standards) ended up with both of his boots removed!

All this would probably surprise his erstwhile minders at Notts County, who released him from their own youth set-up as a 15-year-old. Even Wes admits that at the time they seemed to have made the correct decision - he was apparently failing to match his talent with the correct amount of application - but it made him knuckle down and work when he got back to school. This paid off in 2001, when Nick Marshall was sufficiently impressed to snap him up for Forest's Academy. Since then he has not looked back - to the extent that he is now routinely cited by Marshall as a role model for youngsters who think their career has come to a premature end.

Huge, quick, uncompromising, clumsy... in his early days you were never quite sure whether he was going to execute a stunning tackle or fall over the ball. Whenever the temptation occurred to assume that he had stopped developing, he put on another spurt of improvement, especially when paired with a decent partner; it was noticeable how much better he looked when playing with the experienced Andy Melville in 2004-5, and when he paired up with the superb Kelvin Wilson from 2007-2008 he formed a vital part of statistically the second best defence in the entire country (behind only Manchester United).

As Forest celebrated promotion back away from the nightmare of League One, Wes was one of the few established members of the side with any experience at the higher level. None the less, the 2008-2009 season could have gone either way; either he'd prove to have added consistency to his considerable physical assets and enthhusiasm, and prove to be an accomplished defender at Championship level, or we'd rapidly have seen that he had been promoted above his true level. Happily, it proved to be the former; Wes was the only player who got anywhere near the eventual winner Chris Cohen for player of the season.

2009-10 has, if anything, seen him get even better; his consistent, solid, skillful partnership with Wilson (seen in advance as a potential area of weakness) proved to be one of the best in the division as Forest surpassed even optimistic expectations by putting together an impressive run (not least by remaining unbeaten away as we reach 1 January) that, as we pass into 2010m makes them genuine candidates for promotion.