With just three appearances to his name in Serie A this season on loan at Lecce, it’s fair to say that, once again, Giannelli Imbula’s career is stagnating.
The midfielder, who isn’t wanted at Stoke City, moved to Italy in hope of rekindling what once was a promising footballing future, but his inability to convince Fabio Liverani to start him has led to talk of an exit just six months later.
A number of clubs appear to be interested, including Gaziantep FK in Turkey, and Gazzetta dello Sport make it clear the 27-year-old could be spending his final week or so in the south of Italy.
They report Leganes, Mallorca and the aforementioned Süper Lig side are all keen on Imbula, but that Stoke, where he is under contract until 2021, want to get rid ‘definitively’.
That means they would be unlikely to answer favourably to more loan offers for a player they paid Porto £22m to acquire back in 2016.Since then, Imbula has only made 28 appearances for them, spending most of his time at other clubs like Toulouse in France and Rayo Vallecano in Spain.
He’s on quite high wages at the bet365 Stadium, and it now might be time for Stoke to just accept cutting their losses and saying yes whatever comes their way in terms of permanent transfer offers.
