STUART Pearce says any Premier League clubs eyeing up Nottingham Forest's prize assets are wasting their time, insisting: "None of our players are for sale."
The flying start Britt Assombalonga has made to life in the Championship, by firing eight goals in his first seven league games, has catapulted the 21-year-old into the national spotlight.
Forest paid £5.5m to sign the striker from Peterborough in the summer, but there is already speculation that several top flight clubs may be preparing to test the Reds' resolve with a January bid for the Congo-born player.
But Pearce (pictured), whose side will be looking to retain top spot at Millwall today, has told them not to bother, saying: "I have a chairman who has the financial clout to resist anything that comes our way, for any of our players, without even looking at individuals.
"None of our players are for sale, because the dream of this chairman and the club, along with the fans, is to get into the Premier League.
"The only way to do that is to keep your best players. If people are interested in him, I would say that we are interested in other players too ourselves and we want to add to our squad, we want to bring them here, to complement our best stars.
"We already felt he was good value for money, after working with him for a short space of time. If we can keep working with him and he can keep improving, he will only go up in value and he will be a massive asset to this club over the next five years and longer.
"We will keep pushing him and pushing him. He will only get better."
Assombalonga and fellow new signing Michail Antonio have bagged 13 goals between them already – and Pearce says it was vital that Forest added firepower to their team.
"If you don't have goals in your side, you have to go out and buy that. That is exactly what we did. We also knew that Reidy, Paterson and Lansbury, along with one or two others, could contribute goals as well.
"Both Britt and Michail have started the season well, but we think there is more to come, without a doubt," he said.
"Both are fantastic individuals to work with. They come in with smiles on their faces, they are team players and they work hard. If they have scored goals at the end of the game, then great. But they give us team performances as well."
Despite being unbeaten and top of the table, Pearce says there is also far more to come from Forest as a team.
"It is a message that I have been giving the players for some time and I do not say it out of some misguided attempt to motivate them to carry on. We are a team with the ability to score goals but, consistently, over 90 minutes, we have not nailed games as I believe we can do," he said.
"Look at Derby. They have had the same manager for a period of time, they have had a consistent squad, a lot of whom were put together by Nigel Clough, before Steve McClaren took over. They have had a chance to build. If you looked at our team on Sunday, there were a lot of newbies, a lot of fresh faces and we are growing this club, we are only nine games in now. It is a short space of time.
"It is encouraging, because I don't believe we are anywhere near the finished article."
