Turkish source links Onyekuru with permanent Galatasaray stay

Sport Witness, forwarding a report from Turkish source Aksam, has reported that Galatasaray wants to keep Henry Onyekuru on a permanent deal. If the report is to be believed, the club intends to use former striker Didier Drogba to help in the recruitment.

It is always difficult to determine which Turkish sources are reliable. It could be entirely fabricated or they could have spoken with the the president of Gala himself. Who knows.

The forward was in the news this past weekend after scoring a hat-trick, but those goals only serve to inflate an otherwise modest goal total. With nine SuperLig goals in about 1200 minutes, it is clear why Gala would like to keep the 21 year old wide forward. Separated as we are from the day to day of the Turkish game, it’s hard to see how the player is progressing, but here is what I do know.

In five Champions League appearances (two against FC Porto, one against Schalke, and two against Lokomotiv Moscow), Onyekuru only completed 33% of his dribbles, and loses the ball 3.4 times per 90. As it stands right now, he is a wasteful player. This isn’t entirely surprising for a young forward, but it also is not indicative of a player who is ready for the English Premier League.

While Onyekuru is still a young forward, he does not seem to be dominating inferior competition the way we would expect a budding star to do. The well known site Transfermarkt has Henry listed as being worth £9m, which is barely more than we paid for him. While I am not enthused about his current play, I do think he is young enough that we should wait to see if his value increases before we let him go. The record arrival at Gala is only about £15m, if they are willing to pay that for the player, we would double our money, but for anything short of that I think the best move for Everton is just to hold fast and see whether the player progresses.