Stoke close in on club-record January signing

Yannick Bolasie has seemingly tipped Giannelli Imbula to be a success at Stoke City on social media site Twitter.

The Franco-Congolese midfielder appeared set to have secured an end to his unhappy stay at Porto when rumours emerged that Stoke City were planning to break their club transfer record to bring a premature end to his nightmare six-month sojourn in the Primeira League. Last night [Sunday] it was seemingly hard. It’s progressed significantly quicker this morning. “We hope that at some point in the day we’ll be able to announce a big signing”, Hughes is quoted as saying by BBC Sport.

The deal for Imbula is expected to cost Stoke £18m – a club record fee, breaking the previous record of £12m spent signing Xherdan Shaqiri from Inter Milan last summer.

“He’s a good young player with good power, good ability on the ball, a good range of passing and will add to the quality we already have”.

Meanwhile, there was bad news for another Irish global today, as it was confirmed that Marc Wilson has been ruled out for 10-12 weeks with a knee injury.

“You never know, but I’m sure once people realise that we might be a little bit shy of defensive numbers I’m sure we will get a lot of calls between now and the window closing”.

A fresh start at the Britannia Stadium may be exactly what Imbula needs to get his promising career back on track.