David Carmo, Nottingham Forest, and the Quest to Sign Daniel Podence | OneFootball

The importance of Olympiacos retaining last season's loanee David Carmo cannot be understated. The introduction of Carmo to the backline last January is one of the primary reasons for the club's change in fortunes. His calming presence, dominant aerial capability and excellent ball-playing skills solidified a defense plagued by mistakes in almost every important match. Now that we have entered the season of our 100th anniversary, it is imperative that the club expend every available resource to build off of last season's success. Getting the star defender back on loan from sister club Nottingham Forest, who paid Porto €11million plus €4m in add-ons, is just the type of move necessary to put us in the best position to defend our European crown in the Europa League this time. But what about Wolves winger Daniel Podence? The Portuguese winger was one of the most important offensive pieces going towards the end of the season and combined with former Captain Kostas Fortounis for 51 goal contributions.

Well because of Nottingham Forest, Olympiacos's quest to obtain Daniel Podence is now a little bit easier. As reported originally by Bruno Andrade and later by Fabrizio Romano, Nottingham Forest is the vehicle by which the David Carmo deal has been financed. The move is actually brilliant for both Forest and Olympiacos. Forest purchases David Carmo for 15 million, signs him to a 5 year contract, then loans him directly to Olympiacos. With a 5 year contract, Forest can amortize the transfer fee at 3 million euros per year. So if they sent Carmo to Olympiacos with a loan fee of 3 million euros and wages covered, there would be no negative impact for PSR reporting. Forest gets itself an incredible defensive asset that it can evaluate in the future and Olympiacos gets an important piece it needs in the short term to challenge in the Europa League. This is what we would call win/win.

The financing of the Carmo deal has a huge impact on how we can approach the Podence transfer with Wolves. Everyone knows that Olympiacos does not have the same financial resources as a premier league club like Forest. It would have been impossible to sign both Carmo and Podence without the sale of a major asset like DM Santiago Hezze. A reported Newcastle offer of 25 million euros led us to believe that this was indeed the case. Now that we know Forest has financed the Carmo deal, Olympiacos should have the budget to be able to pursue Podence without the sale of one of its top assets.

The multi-club model lends itself to these types of perks within the club ecosystem. Clubs in leagues with lesser revenues can benefit from the shared resources of other clubs within the network through creative deal making. Even beyond leveraging financial resources the clubs can share scouting networks and agent relations. It took a couple of years for the Marinakis network to really understand the real value of this network. After years of trading "flops" and "failed players" back and forth, this summer we have finally seen measured business within the network.