Patrick Bamford is undergoing a medical at Middlesbrough with a view to signing a four-and-a-half-year contract with the Premier League club after Chelsea accepted an initial offer of around £5m for the striker. The transfer fee for the 23-year-old could rise to as much as £10m depending on appearances and various clauses being triggered.
Bamford leaves Chelsea without ever making a senior appearance for the club he joined from Nottingham Forest for £1.5m five years ago. He has been loaned out to six clubs, including Middlesbrough, where he scored 19 goals during the 2014‑15 season and was named Championship player of the year.
His most recent loan spell was with Burnley, where he played for a total of 34 minutes this season across six substitute appearances. Bamford also saw little action in the previous campaign – he never started a league game during a loan spell with Crystal Palace that was cut short, and five of his seven league appearances for Norwich, during the second half of the 2015-16 season, were from the bench.
With 18 months remaining on his contract at Chelsea and no prospect of breaking through at Stamford Bridge, Bamford was keen to secure a permanent transfer and avoid another loan move. He will hope that a fresh start at Middlesbrough helps to reignite the promising career that has stalled since he left the Riverside a little under two years ago.
