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According to Paul Joyce, Sandro Ramirez has already played his last game in an Everton shirt for this season. The forward picked up an assist in Wednesday’s 3-1 win over Rotherham.
Sandro Ramirez set to join Real Sociedad on season-long loan tomorrow. Sources in Spain say no option to buy. He would be the fifth player signed last summer to leave Everton within 12-months following Rooney, Klaassen, Vlasic and Martina.
— paul joyce (@_pauljoyce) August 29, 2018
If the lack of a buy option is confusing to you, look no further than Sandro’s contract. Sandro currently makes £120,000 a week and outside of about four or five teams in Spain hardly anyone makes that kind of money.
The Blues will actually foot one-third of his current wages to make him more affordable for Sociedad.
Told #efc will be funding around a third of Sandro’s wages during his loan to Real Sociedad. Flew out for his medical today. Real surprised he played in yesterday’s Carabao Cup game. No option to buy in agreement
— Paul Brown (@pbsportswriter) August 30, 2018
Sociedad, especially this season with no European football, is not one of those teams. Therefore, with Sandro’s contract reaching until 2021, there is no incentive for the player to reach a new, less prosperous deal with the Spanish club and there’s no interest on the part of the Basque club to pay his current wages.
It is a bit unclear exactly how Sandro fits at Sociedad. Xabi Prieto retired at the end of last year, but he usually played a bit deeper for the team despite being one of the focal points of their offense.
More likely, he is a replacement for Imanol Agirretxe who retired this week. Agirretxe played very little in 2017-2018 as injuries ruined his season, but he had scored 20 goals in the two seasons before that from the center forward spot as a reserve player backing up Willian Jose.
Sandro has not shown much in the last year that would suggest he can fill that role, but in fairness to him Everton was very poorly managed last year and when he went on loan to Sevilla he found himself trying regain form on one of the better teams in Europe. Sociedad may be more his speed.
I like Sandro, and I hate that his time at Everton has not gone better, but the best thing for the club will continue to be to loan him out and get the receiving club to subsidize his wages until either his contract ends or he comes good.