Everton future talks to begin this week for goalkeeper Joao Virginia
Sporting Lisbon will open talks with Everton over the future of goalkeeper Joao Virginia this week as they look to sign him permanently.
According to Portuguese media outlet Record, the Liga NOS side are keen to keep Virginia after playing him in recent matches but they see the £4.2million future fee clause as “excessive” and want to negotiate new terms with the Toffees.
There are initial plans to have the conversation after Everton’s final Premier League game away at Arsenal but the Merseyside club could reject any new fee with two years still left on his contract at Goodison Park.
Frank Lampard has no big hurry to bring the 22-year-old back to the club having just extended the contract of Bosnia and Herzegovina international Asmir Begovic for another season and Jordan Pickford remaining the undisputed number one.
Let him go
If there are no plans to play a player at any point, then why on earth would any club keep them around?
Virginia joined the club a while ago and might have been seen as a potential future number one for the football club but everything we have seen since suggests that there is none of that in him anymore.
The £4.2million clause we instilled in his loan agreement is obviously something we’d like to see come to fruition but if Sporting aren’t willing to splash that amount of money on him, then we have to negotiate.
It would be very beneficial to get some money for him, even if it is a touch less than originally agreed because if we don’t show some kind of flexibility, we’ll end up losing him for absolutely nothing.
Lampard will hopefully see the light soon enough in this regard and allow him to leave for a cheaper transfer fee to head back to his homeland for good.
In other Everton news, the Premier League spend per point statistics makes for alarming reading for the Toffees.
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