Lorient Vice-President Laments Sunderland Conduct Over Kone Deal

With Sam Allardyce confirming this afternoon in his press conference that the deal to bring Lamine Kone to the club was dead it would seem that the move ended due to a break down in communications between the two parties.

As we revealed earlier today Kone has returned back to France having spent time at the Academy sorting things out this week.

@RokerReport I hear he was blocked from coming into the training ground yesterday!!

— Mark Douglas (@MsiDouglas) January 7, 2016

Just what exactly has gone on remains to be seen. Lorient vice president Alex Hayes, however, is clearly very unhappy as to what exactly went wrong. He told French newspaper Le Telegramme:

It’s quite outrageous. We gave Sunderland our consent last Tuesday, Lamine left the next day to have contract talks, but the player warned us there were problems in negotiating his contract.

Because of the holidays it dragged out until Monday. They tried to change the pre-agreed deal. Lamine called me to ask if he could return to Lorient and I told him with great pleasure.

Although the failure to secure Kone is a blow to Allardyce's plans for the January window that has been lessened somewhat, with Big Sam confirming today that German defender Jan Kirchhoff is set to be confirmed as his first signing of the year.