One of Sunderland’s attacking targets is set to join a Ligue 1 club.
Sunderland had reignited their interest in Lille winger Alan Virginius this month, having seen a £4.3 million bid rejected for him in the summer.
Alan Virginius joined Lille from Sochaux in August 2022 on a £5k-per-week contract, and made 15 appearances in Ligue 1 last season, scoring once.
The 21-year-old has managed only 71 minutes of league action this season though, while he has made one start in the Europa Conference League.
Recent reports claimed that Virginius was ‘unhappy’ at Lille and is looking to move on in the January window, sparking interest from Sunderland, Clermont Foot, FC Lorient, Saint-Etienne and BSC Young Boys.
Young Boys had already made an loan offer with a view to buy for €4.5m (£3.9m) and saw their bid turned down, while Clermont Foot initially had their own offer rejected too.
However, L’Equipe has reported that the ‘very strong’ attacker is now set to join the French club on a six-month loan deal after snubbing a move to Wearside.
Clermont currently sit glued to the bottom of Ligue 1, suffering 10 defeats in their first 17 games of the campaign. The side sit five points from safety and are without a league win in their last six matches.
Deja vu?
Alan Virginius seemed like a similar signing to that of Isaac Lihadji from Lille a year ago.
The 21-year-old barely spoke English and had scored only one goal in Ligue 1 before arriving at Sunderland.
Lihadji managed six cameos for the Black Cats before cutting his stay short and signing for Qatari side Al-Duhail.
Alan Virginius – who has less action for Lille under his belt than Lihadji did – is unlikely to be the one that got away.
There is plenty of young, exciting prospects across Europe that need snapping up, but we honestly don’t seem very good at signing them.
If Virginius would prefer a relegation battle at the bottom of Ligue 1 then that is fine, as it only seemed like a wrong decision waiting to happen once again.
We already have the likes of Abdoullah Ba and Jewison Bennette who seem far from the quality needed to compete for a place in the starting line-up, and Virginius definitely wouldn’t strengthen our options any further.
Let the young players develop and bring in some more experience, rather than adding more and more youth to our inexperienced team.