According to reports from The Telegraph, Nottingham Forest will have to pay £15m if they wish to sign Newcastle United striker Dwight Gayle in January.

The 29-year-old has been linked with a move to the City Ground for what seems like an eternity, with West Bromwich Albion and Leeds also being credited with an interest in the forward.

Gayle - who scored 23 goals to help the Magpies lift the Championship title in 2017 - is a proven goalscorer at Championship level having also scored 24 goals on loan with West Brom last term.

But despite helping the Baggies reach the play-off semi-finals, he still finds himself massively down the pecking order at St. James' Park under Steve Bruce, and has made just three Premier League appearances this term.

Can you score 18 out of 18 on this Forest quiz?

Despite Bruce ruling out a January exit, though, contrasting reports claim that if clubs are to sign Gayle, then it would cost them £15m - this would be a club-record signing for Forest, who spent £13.2m to sign Joao Carvalho from Benfica last summer.

Here, then, we take a look at two pros and two cons to Forest smashing their club-record fee to sign Dwight Gayle...

Even if Gayle wasn't a player on Forest's radar, then signing a new striker would still be such a huge priority in January.

Over the course of the summer, the club bid farewell to the likes of Daryl Murphy, Jason Cummings, Hillal Soudani and Apostolos Vellios, and they also let Tyler Walker go out on loan to Lincoln City.

But despite bringing in Rafa Mir on loan from Wolves, Forest are still incredibly short of any depth up top, with Grabban and Mir their only out-and-out striking options at present.

An injury to Grabban could be detrimental for Forest, with Mir still yet to find the back of the net in a Garibaldi shirt. Signing Gayle would add depth to a position that, quite simply, needs strengthening.

It's quite rare for a club to smash their club-record fee in two successive seasons, and you get the feeling that this signing would absolutely delight Forest fans.

Gayle has scored 20+ goals for two different clubs at this level before, and whilst he may not score as many goals at Forest due to us being halfway through the season, it would still be a massive statement of intent to sign him at this level.

Fans would only be buzzing at this arrival, and it could be the boost the club, the manager and the players need in order to recharge their batteries and prepare for a hectic second half of the season.

The club is on the right path, and signing a proven goalscorer for multi-million pounds in January would be a real statement indeed.

As alluded to before, spending £15m on a player would be a massive statement of intent, but that would leave them in a difficult position if they wished to sign any more players as well as Gayle.

It's obviously unknown how much of a budget Lamouchi will be given by the board in January, but you would imagine that £15m would be a colossal chunk of it, if not all of it.

They certainly need to add a new striker, but they could do with signing players who play in other positions too, and whether they could do so after signing Gayle remains to be seen.

Getting rid of fringe players could be so, so important in January.

Lewis Grabban and Rafa Mir simply need competition being brought in in January, but how would the former feel about this move?

He has scored eight goals in 18 games this season - 25 in a total of 59 appearances for the Reds - he's their leading goalscorer, and he has also been a regular under Lamouchi.

If Gayle comes in, then Forest obviously aren't going to play him on the bench every week, especially if they splash £15m on him. But, Forest have thrived in Lamouchi's 4-2-3-1 system this term, and there is only room for one striker in that set-up.

Can Forest afford to drop one of their most important players, just to make way for Gayle? That's the question that will be on fans' minds.