Everton were prepared to pay £18m for Lamine Kone in 2016 but now Sunderland probably won’t even make back the £6m they paid for him.
Things don’t get any easier for Sunderland. Currently bottom of the Championship table and five points from safety with eight matches to play, they could now be stuck with some of their most expensive players.
What is perhaps even more galling for the club is that they could have made a significant profit on one in particular if they had just agreed to sell him in the summer of 2016.
That man is Lamine Kone, with the Daily Mail reporting at the time that Everton made a whopping £18m offer for the centre-back after an impressive first six months at the Stadium of Light.
Then manager David Moyes was reluctant to sell Kone before a replacement was found and in the end the Toffees signed Ashley Williams from Swansea City instead.
Now the Sunderland Echo speculates that the Black Cats would struggle to even make back the £6m they paid Lorient for the 29-year-old in January 2016.
Kone has hardly impressed for a side that has conceded 68 league goals in 38 matches this term – the most in the second tier of English football – and just two years after having the possibility of trebling their money, the Wearsiders are now likely to make a loss on the Ivory Coast international.
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