It cannot be easy being a football player on the final day of the transfer window.
Waking up in the morning knowing that, in only a few hours, you could be packing your bags and heading to a new club in a new country.
So spare a thought for Ernest Nuamah.
Both Everton and Fulham, HITC reported at the time, were keen to bring the Olympique Lyonnais wideman to the Premier League before the window closed a fortnight ago.
Nuamah, clearly, was not quite so enthused about the idea of a fresh start in England, however. According to L’Equipe, the 20-year-old was reportedly in tears as he underwent the final stages of a prospective switch to Craven Cottage, eventually fleeing in the final few hours of the window in a desperate attempt to save his Lyon career.
Everton and Fulham missed out on Lyon’s Ernest Nuamah
To John Textor’s credit, the Lyon owner was in no mood to admonish the player.
Instead, he feels he learned a lot from a saga which provides a reminder as to just how stressful life as a professional footballer be when you’re being shunted from pillar to post against your will and forced to leave the place you call home at such short notice.
“He didn’t want to leave,” Textor explains to RMC Sport. “I contacted Ernest very quickly. I apologised.
“I learned a lot (from this situation). He is someone of great value. These kinds of decisions make the players say to themselves that OL is a great club with extraordinary facilities (and) we are in the Europa League.”
Nuamah, capped 12 times by Ghana already before his 21st birthday, only joined Lyon in an eventual £24 million deal at the start of this year.
A graduate of the fabled Right to Dream academy which also gave us Mohammed Kudus and Simon Adingra – now at West Ham United and Brighton and Hove Albion respectively – Nuamah moved to France from another of Textor’s clubs. The Belgian outfit RWD Molenbeek.
“Ernest is first and foremost a dribbler,” Nuamah’s former Nordsjaelland coach Flemming Pedersen said, via Breaking the Lines. “He is incredibly fast, has a huge acceleration, and a good agility.
He is primarily left-footed, but can also use the right. He is a great individualist with tremendous power, who has great potential to also become a skilled team player.”
Everton might have missed out on Nuamah – who HITC understands preferred a move to Fulham anyway – though they did manage to bring in another player from Lyon. Former Nottingham Forest midfilelder Orel Mangala returns to England.
Fulham, meanwhile, moved on from Nuamah by snapping up the perennial Arsenal benchwarmer Reiss Nelson.
John Textor opens up on Everton takeover plans
Textor, in that same interview, also opened up on the discussions that could see him take over a crisis-hit Everton outfit, providing he first sells his shares in Crystal Palace.
“The potential acquisition of Everton would come from my own funding, and the deal that is being discussed would be me as the buyer. The buyer of Everton would be John Textor,” the American businessman explains, only a few months after the collapse of those talks with the 777 Partners.
“I would be the investor. A new holding company would be created. There would be no impact on OL Group (which includes Lyon). The acquisition would be done in equity if it goes well.
“There is a 90 per cent chance of reaching an agreement, but the current owner of Everton has a lot of choice.”
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