I think it's alot simpler than that. Mitchell isn't one man scouring the world for talent. Look back to last summer when the press were telling us there was massive disharmony in the club. It's that.
Their squad is shocking they need to spend a fortune like forest did to stay up. It's easy to forget forest signed 20 players when they went up and it's only this season they haven't been threatened with relegation
Lowest we can finish is 6th unless Forest beat Chelsea and we lose by 3 goals more than that. So say Forest beat Chelsea 1-0 we would need to lose by 4 to finish 7th. Unless Forest beat Chelsea 6-5, then we cant lose by more than 3.