Lewis O’Brien is not supposed to be in the outskirts of Leesburg, Virginia, speaking to a reporter a day before jetting off to Florida.
The plan was for the 24-year-old, at this point in April, to be winding up a a day after training, preparing for a critical Championship clash between Blackburn Rovers and Preston North End.
Instead, a bizarre set of circumstances involving the transfer deadline, squad registration, a series of appeals, and a desire to get games has ended with O’Brien joining D.C. United for an unusual (for MLS at least) short-term loan that runs through July 16. The away day coach trip featuring an inevitable traffic jam has been replaced by a flight to places like Montréal and Orlando.
Speaking to Pro Soccer Wire, O’Brien said the whole experience has been “strange,” but repeatedly circled back to one main point: “I’m now at D.C. happy, playing football again, so that’s all that really mattered in the end.”
O’Brien’s had an eventful year or so. Off the field, he got engaged in December. On it, he was thriving, playing nearly every minute for Huddersfield in the 2021-22 Championship season and earning a transfer to the Premier League. Nottingham Forest, who beat Huddersfield in the promotion playoffs, paid a reported $12.3 million in a summer transfer for both O’Brien and Harry Toffolo.
Despite Forest’s massive influx of new players, O’Brien started the first five games of their season, and scored his first-ever Premier League goal in September.
However, Forest’s battle to stay up has seen manager Steve Cooper cycle through his options, and after a reported illness, O’Brien saw his minutes drying up.
“I was never going into this club thinking I’m gonna play every game, right? It doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to work for it,” said O’Brien. “At that moment in time, for me to carry on pushing and carry on my career, to come back and help Nottingham Forest — hopefully in the Premier League at the end of the season — the best option for me was to go out and play football.”
O’Brien said that he and Forest agreed that a loan was the best solution. Heading into the last days of the winter transfer window, he said that Cooper and club staff were regularly in touch.
“We were always agreeing on what was going to happen, and [they told me], ‘keep your phone close, just in case,'” recalled O’Brien.
That eventually turned into a call summoning O’Brien on deadline day. A loan move to Blackburn was close enough that with the deadline looming at 11:00 p.m., he had to get up to his prospective new club for a medical.
“I was there at [Blackburn’s] training ground,” said O’Brien. “I think on all sides — Forest, Blackburn, my side — we’d all assumed that it was done.”
An English Football League chronology of events produced during the appeals process said that O’Brien’s medical took place around roughly 9:00 p.m., and he said he stuck around until the transfer window closed, unsure of what was to come.
“Because of the time — it was, I think 11 o’clock, by the time everything had finished up, which is actually the deadline of the actual transfer window — they just said ‘Everything will get sorted, we’ll contact you in the morning.’ So I drove home not really knowing what’s going on…it was kind of all up in the air.”
That’s putting it lightly. The EFL eventually concluded that relevant paperwork from Blackburn didn’t arrive until 11:28 p.m., meaning they had missed the deadline and could not register him as a new player. Forest, meanwhile, had to register their own 25-player list to the Premier League, and on the assumption that O’Brien’s loan would have no issues, submitted a roster without him.
O’Brien suddenly went from seeking more playing time, to needing to find a club that could put him on the field at all.
With little else to do, O’Brien said he spent a couple of days at home waiting to hear whether the issue could be sorted out. Blackburn sent word that they were launching an appeal, but while that process played out O’Brien was stuck. He rejoined Forest for training, but that was about all he could do.
“It was tough. It was really tough,” O’Brien said when thinking back to a February spent in limbo. “It was strange. I had to go into training every day and work my hardest to stay fit… for me to come in every day and train, but still not know if I was going to be available to play for Blackburn, it was a strange feeling.”
Weeks went by, and while Blackburn kept up their appeals, every new one filed meant a longer wait and more uncertainty.
“I just wanted every day to just get the answer. It wasn’t even if the answer was a yeah, I just wanted to know that it was a solid answer, because I think there was something like three appeals within the month,” said O’Brien. That wait dragged on until March 1, when Blackburn issued a club statement conceding that the matter was done: O’Brien’s move was off.
Rooney key to O’Brien’s move
While that clarity may have taken one burden off O’Brien’s shoulders, it left a new one: where does an English player go to get quality playing time once European windows have closed?
According to O’Brien, Forest was prepared for just this sort of problem, and sent him a list of leagues where the window remained open. It wasn’t long before O’Brien found himself focusing on an MLS move as a once-in-a-lifetime sort of opening.
“I’m never gonna get the opportunity to come out here at my age and play football in MLS,” explained O’Brien. “I mean, it was a no-brainer for me.”
Once O’Brien placed MLS atop his list and started hearing back about clubs being interested, what put United ahead of the rest was not exactly a surprise.
“When you look at it, it’s kind of obvious,” said O’Brien with a chuckle. “I’m never gonna get a chance for one of the best midfielders-slash-strikers in history of England to coach me as a football player. If I can’t get better when he’s coaching me, I don’t think I ever will. So it was a no-brainer to come with Wayne Rooney being the manager, he’s only going to improve me.”
O’Brien didn’t know exactly what life would be like in MLS, but said he’s been “pleasantly surprised” with things at both United and on a league level. The system Rooney is playing is familiar, and according to O’Brien the standard of play is equivalent to what he’s experienced in the Championship. Speaking to reporters at Audi Field just minutes after his first taste of the league, O’Brien called a 2-0 loss to the Columbus Crew “probably one of the toughest [games] that I’ll have all season.”
O’Brien argued that English perceptions of MLS are down to the time difference preventing more people from staying up to actually see the league on a regular basis.
“Week-in, week-out, it’s not Premier League standard. You’re not just gonna go to another league that’s gonna be as good as that,” said O’Brien. “The quality of the league is a lot better than what English people think, because they don’t get to watch it. It’s late and no one’s gonna stay up till [12:30, 1:30] to watch.”
The quality that saw Forest giving him immediate starts in the Premier League has been obvious in MLS, where O’Brien has hit the ground running in the heart of United’s midfield. He notched his first goal over the weekend as D.C. broke a six-game winless skid with a 1-0 win at CF Montréal. It’s early days, but he has already drawn praise from fans looking for something to get excited about following a miserable 2022 season.
Lewis O'Brien follows up the rebound for his first @dcunited goal. #VamosUnited
Watch live now on #MLSSeasonPass on @AppleTV: https://t.co/l3MEGoyfJT pic.twitter.com/1Z7tzkWFVV
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) April 16, 2023
Off the field, there have been pluses and minuses. The urgency to get back on the field meant that once his move to D.C. materialized, things happened so quickly that he didn’t have time to consider what comes with a trans-Atlantic move.
“When you’re back in England, all that you can think about is ‘I’ve got to go play football, I’ve got to go play football. No matter where, I’ve got to go play football,'” said O’Brien. “Then when you get here, you realize that you’ve just left everything back home. I’ve left my fiancée back home, I’ve left my family, my dogs, everything. I just got up and left in one day, because it was like, ‘Here’s your flight. You can go now, you’re gonna come over.’ So once you sit down and you’ve had a couple of days, you kind of think, ‘actually I’ve just up and left pretty quick.'”
He misses his dogs Teddy and Nellie, and admitted “the days can be long” once training is over. However, his parents have already visited — O’Brien took them to the White House for what he called a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” — and he said his fiancée was due to arrive on Wednesday.
In the meantime, life in the States has its appeal. O’Brien made sure to go to some Washington Wizards games before their season ended, and he’s enjoying a block of sunny spring days in the region. In a truly rare take on life around the Capital Beltway, he’s even a fan of driving the region.
While O’Brien didn’t close the door to a permanent switch, it seems like an extended stay in the District is unlikely. For one thing, United would have to meet a purchase clause in their loan that in all likelihood would approach eight figures. That kind of fee would make O’Brien a Designated Player, and United has already maxed out its DP allotment with Christian Benteke, Taxi Fountas, and Mateusz Klich.
There’s also the fact that Forest seems to value O’Brien’s prospects at the Premier League level. The man himself said that the entire loan idea, whether to Blackburn, United, or anywhere else, was broached with Forest’s long-term interests in mind.
“For me to progress and to help the club in the long run — because I’m still there for another three years — it’d be best for me to go out on loan, play some football, and come back,” he explained. “I’m just going to take the days as they come and the weeks as they come. Whatever happens in July, happens in July and hopefully I’ll be a better footballer for coming out here.”
When it comes to transfers, every player says they want to just focus on their soccer. After an odyssey to even get back on the field, there are few that mean it more than O’Brien does.
[lawrence-related id=14617,17897,15952]
