Four players could soften transfer blow as Everton brace for summer battle

A report claims that Barcelona are willing to offer Everton the pick of four players to land their £80million-rated midfielder Amadou Onana but how much of a tempting deal is that?

TEAMtalk cites Sport, the Spanish daily based in Barcelona itself as stating that the Catalan giants are putting Ansu Fati, Clement Lenglet, Sergino Dest and Fermin Lopez on the table to try and tempt the Blues into a transfer.

They even take the liberty of going as far as saying Onana is ‘excited by the prospect of playing for Barcelona’ and they will be ‘one of the priorities for him this summer, but he will consider other options.’ That’s nice of him considering that his contract at Everton runs until June 30, 2027.

However, the article also concedes that the quartet, who have all been deemed surplus to requirements at Barca, are ‘unlikely to drive down the price of Onana significantly.’ Here’s a closer look at what they all could potentially bring.

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First let’s look at Lopez, the only player currently at Barcelona – the other three are all out on loan – and the only central midfielder on the list offering anything resembling a like-for-like replacement for Onana. Although they occupy similar areas of the pitch – the more attack-minded Lopez can also operate as a winger, they are quite different in their make-up.

According to Comparisonator’s Similarity Comparison which uses a series of detailed AI parameters to build an overall picture of a player’s all-round game, there is a midfielder in La Liga who is a staggering 99% match to Onana but it’s Rayo Vallecano’s 30-year-old Pathe