Manchester City have reached an agreement to sign Burnley goalkeeper James Trafford, a report has revealed.
It emerged last week that City had expressed interest in signing Trafford, a long-time target for Newcastle United, as they braced for the departure of at least one of Ederson or Stefan Ortega this summer.
Pep Guardiola’s side were aided by the presence of a buy-back clause of £40 million ($54.1 million) secured when they sold their former academy star in the summer of 2023. Fabrizio Romano has now confirmed that a deal worth less than that figure has been reached.
The Athletic later revealed that City had matched a bid from Newcastle worth £27 million ($36.5 million), two years after selling Trafford to Burnley for £14 million ($18.9 million).
The move suggests that one of City’s current goalkeepers is due to depart soon. A recent report claimed Guardiola is keen to retain Ederson in the face of interest from Galatasaray.
Last month, Trafford opened up on his desire to compete at the top of the Premier League and even admitted the prospect of being City’s starting goalkeeper is an appealing one.
“I wanted to go, and when the opportunity came to play in the Premier League and go to Burnley, I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do that’, because I was away at the Euros at the time, and I’d known about Burnley for a long time before and it was more or less done before the Euros,” Trafford told The Ben Foster Podcast of his departure from City in 2023.
“And I remember speaking to the goalie coach [at Manchester City] and he was like, ‘We’ve obviously got interest, we’ve accepted the bid, do you want to go?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to go in the Premier League’.
“I said I wanted to play for Man City, and who doesn’t want to be Man City’s No.1? I believed I could be, but obviously at this moment in time, I’m not going to say that I want to be X, Y and Z because I need to get better.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Man City ‘Agree Deal’ to Re-Sign Former Goalkeeper.
