Leeds United and Middlesbrough support must look at Djed Spence, Nottingham Forest exploits with envy | OneFootball

Djed Spence helped Nottingham Forest win promotion to the Premier League, but was less successful for Middlesbrough and Leeds United

Tottenham Hotspur's Djed Spence is a Fulham academy product, although his first minutes in senior football arrived during the 2018/19 season, by which time he was plying his trade for Middlesbrough.

The 2018/19 campaign witnessed the versatile full-back make two EFL Cup appearances for Boro but he would not make a Championship outing until the subsequent 2019/20 season, in which he scored one goal in 22 league appearances, as well as making his FA Cup debut.

By 2020/21, Spence was a mainstay at the Riverside Stadium, as he made 38 second-tier outings, helping his club to a tenth-place finish, but by August 2021, he was deployed on loan to then-fellow Championship side Nottingham Forest after ex-Boro boss Neil Warnock decided that the full-back was not part of his plans.

There is no doubt that throughout his career, Warnock has had a great deal of managerial success, especially in the Football League, but the Spence call was not his best.

While Boro missed out on the top-six spots by a mere five points come the end of the 2021/22 Championship season, Forest went on to win promotion to the Premier League via a play-off final win over Huddersfield Town, and the gifted full-back was a major help along the way.

The Riverside Stadium faithful must have been particularly envious of Spence's Forest exploits, as he shone at the City Ground as he scored two goals and created four assists for the East Midlands side during their promotion-winning second-tier campaign, which was more goal contributions than he had ever managed throughout the entirety of his career on Teesside.

And while Spurs signed Spence for a lucrative initial fee of £12.5m in 2022, Boro supporters will feel aggrieved that their club's former player left them for a high-profile Premier League club without ever displaying his best football at the Riverside Stadium, in the way in which he subsequently managed at the City Ground.

Another set of supporters who will be jealous of the full-back's Forest exploits is that of Leeds, who saw their club sign the former England youth international on loan from Spurs in August 2023.

Having faced relegation from the Premier League during the spring of 2023, the Elland Road faithful will have hoped that Spence could be the sort of signing who would capably guide the Whites back to the top flight and achieve a similar feat to that of his Forest days.

However, after joining the West Yorkshire side on a season-long loan deal, the former Boro man managed just seven appearances for the Whites during the first half of the 2023/24 campaign and was subsequently recalled by Spurs, before going out on loan to Serie A side Genoa.

Meanwhile, Daniel Farke's men reached the Championship play-off final but lost 1-0 to Southampton.

By the time the full-back signed terms at Elland Road, he had a promotion to the top flight with Forest to his name and had also appeared four times in the Premier League for Spurs, before playing in both Ligue 1 and the Europa League during a 2022/23 loan spell with French side Rennes.

With this sort of experience under his belt, Whites supporters could not be blamed for believing that Spence could help their club make a top-flight return, but such events did not transpire, so the Elland Road faithful can be just as envious as Boro fans of the Englishman's Forest success.