Five Premier League summer sales set for Angel Gomes-like England calls in 2028
Four years after leaving Manchester United – having been one of the most vaunted prospects in their academy – Angel Gomes is in line for his senior England debut.
Ninety-nine per cent of people telling you they’ve been following his progress since leaving Old Trafford at Boavista and Lille are goddamn liars. He couldn’t have been further from England fans’ thoughts as they watched Gareth Southgate’s side fall at the last hurdle in Berlin. “If only Gomes was here,” said absolutely no-one.
Had any other manager in world football been named as Southgate’s replacement, the midfielder would not be in the England squad.
That doesn’t mean Carsley’s wrong or that Gomes is unworthy of a place in the squad; we’re excited to see him and are frankly embarrassed that we weren’t keeping a closer eye on a player featuring in the wilderness of *checks notes* France.
But it did get us thinking about which young players have moved abroad from the Premier League this summer who can expect an England call in 2028 from Ben Futcher, the new England U21 boss and presumably Carsley’s replacement at the senior helm in four years’ time.
Tino Anjorin (Chelsea to Empoli, £850,000)
More than half of Tino Anjorin’s 250-odd minutes as a senior Chelsea player earned him a Champions League winner’s medal, as Frank Lampard handed the then teenager his first and only start for the club in the group stage dead rubber against Krasnodar before Thomas Tuchel arrived to drive the club to glory in Porto.
Lampard was impressed with “the way he receives the ball, the way he moves with the ball very quickly, his physical attributes to protect the ball and run” but Tuchel and several managers since have not been convinced.
The downward curve of Anjorin’s career has followed that of the manager who gave him his Chelsea chance, but at least Anjorin has been given the opportunity to start afresh in Serie A after less-than-productive loan spells with Lokomotiv Moscow, Huddersfield and Portsmouth, while Lampard lingers around the England training ground in the hope of being asked to put the cones out.
Empoli just avoided relegation last season but have five points from their opening three games this term, including a win over Roma and a draw with Bologna. It sounds like a decent place to be if Anjorin can stay on the right side of manager Roberto D’Aversa, who you might describe as a fiery character after he was sacked by Lecce for head-butting an opposition player in March.
Omari Forson (Manchester United to Monza, free)
Proved decisive from the bench on his Premier League debut against Wolves in February, providing an assist with some neat footwork that was entirely forgotten as fellow academy graduate Kobbie Mainoo then danced through a couple of challenges before curling the ball into the far corner. Selfish little so-and-so.
He was handed what turned out to be his only start in the 2-1 defeat against Fulham later that month, with Erik ten Hag insisting before that game that Forson deserved his place over both Amad Diallo and Antony given his contributions from the bench and work ethic in training.
Forson was offered a new deal by United but turned them down to play under Alessandro Nesta, who believes the 20-year-old has “big potential”.
Bobby Clark (Liverpool to RB Salzburg, £10m)
“The steps the boy made though, pfff [wow]!” Klopp said with a typical wide-eyed grin on his face after Clark got a goal and an assist in Liverpool’s 6-1 battering of Sparta Prague in the Europa League in March.
He was handed two further starts by Klopp, against Nottingham Forest and Southampton, having come from the bench to join the rest of ‘Klopp’s kids’ in the creche-cum-football team that embarrassed Chelsea’s billion pound bottle jobs in the Carabao Cup final.
Slightly odd then after that breakthrough campaign that Liverpool would be willing to see the back of the midfielder, though they will trust he’s in good hands under Klopp’s former assistant Pep Lijnders in Salzburg, a club renowned for nurturing young talent, while £10m for a guy bought from Newcastle for £1.5m three years before is some excellent business.
A 17.5% sell-on clause and buy-back option made it a no-brainer for Liverpool, while Clark will undoubtedly see more action and England may well eventually reap that reward.
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Shola Shoretire (Manchester United to PAOK Salonika, free)
None of his five senior appearances came under Erik ten Hag, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer using him on three occasions having handed Shoretire his debut in February 2021, making him the youngest United player ever to appear in a European game at 17 years and 23 days, before Ralf Rangnick gave him two further opportunities having promoted him to first-team training alongside Alejandro Garnacho.
“He’ll be an athlete and technically he is very, very good,” Solskjaer said after that debut against Real Sociedad, voicing the sentiment around Carrington that Shoretire was one for the future.
Like Forson, Shoretire was reportedly offered a new deal to stay at United but has opted for pastures new. Absolutely no one would have predicted PAOK Salonica to be his landing spot, and the road from there to an England call looks almost impassable, but he’s a talented boy and he may not be in Greece for long.
Samuel Iling-Junior (Aston Villa to Bologna, loan)
We’re definitely cheating a bit here because it is only a season-long loan after Iling-Junior actually moved to Aston Villa from Juventus in the summer, but you can take us out back and shoot us if we ever do a list of four, so here he is.
Part of the deal along with Enzo Barrenechea (who’s also gone straight out on loan, to Valencia) that took Douglas Luiz to Juventus, we’re far from convinced that Unai Emery – or anyone at Villa for that matter – actually wanted the 20-year-old, who moved from the Chelsea academy to the Old Lady in 2020, or whether he was a mere pawn to save Villa from keeping a sulking Brazilian midfielder for a season, who they had to get rid of anyway to avoid PSR sanctions.
Iling-Junior’s clearly got some talent, having made 45 appearances for Juventus over the last couple of seasons and will presumably see more game time (given the majority of his Serie A displays thus far were from the bench) with Bologna.