To be fair, they bagged most of those on free transfers and of them:
Andy Reid is injury-prone and his best form comes in patches. Boateng is 35 years old. Derbyshire's only just returned to English football and needs time to settle in...
I think his point is is that after a.) the spending that Leicester, West Ham and other teams in this league have carried out, Forest's squad is relevantly stagnant from their last failed playoff campaign, and they're gonna get left behind. b.) They lost 4-1 to the Hammers last Sunday, and obviously it's got to have shaken McLaren's confidence in his side- like Wenger, he needed to get reinforcements, which he didn't.
Then again, a lot of managers would struggle in this environment, because it's such an unpredictable league in many respects. Maybe a few wins would put him and Forest back on the right track...