Wigan Athletic in line for massive cash injection thanks to Premier move

Fulham have reportedly put a £35million price tag on their USA international defender Antonee Robinson, according to the Evening Standard.

The 25-year-old has been reluctant to sign a new deal, and is interesting a host of top clubs including Manchester City, Newcastle United and Olympique Marseille.

Robinson joined Fulham from Latics in the summer of 2020 shortly after the administrators moved in at the DW Stadium.

The Cottagers met the £2million buy-out clause in Robinson's contract but, crucially, Jonathan Jackson had inserted a stipulation in the deal which brought Robinson from Everton 12 months earlier.

While allowing Robinson to leave for the same amount Latics were paying the Toffees, Jackson made sure any club taking advantage of that would also have to pay Latics 20 per cent of any profit they made from his next transfer.

With Fulham aiming to make a cool profit of £33million on the player, that would appear to mean Latics in line to receive a fee in the region of £6.6million.

Wigan Today understands Everton would be in line for 20 per cent of that – around £1.3million – leaving Latics with a nice final sum in the region of £5.3million.

That would not be a lump sum, with most deals nowadays payable in instalments, but it would certainly be music to the ears of the Latics finance department.

Latics have been quids in over the last couple of years thanks to shrewd negotiating.

Kieffer Moore's move to Bournemouth and Dan Burn's transfer to Newcastle brought in much-needed millions of pounds.

And with the club aiming for a more self-sustainable future under Mike Danson, the bumper amount hopefully on its way from Fulham would be a massive fillip.

Robinson almost joined AC Milan in January 2020, after a fee of around £6million had been agreed.

However, the move was scuppered by a failed medical - which the player later revealed was due to the amount of coffee he'd drunk that day, which led to a heart 'irregularity' being wrongly flagged up.

“I was in hospital doing loads of tests and scans on my knees and back," Robinson admitted. "They were asking if I’d ever had any issues with my heart.

"I said: ‘No’ but then they sent me to another hospital to do another ECG and when they got the results they sent me to Milan’s headquarters.

"My agent’s there with (Paolo) Maldini and all the higher-ups of Milan and I’m expecting to sign my deal.

“But they said: ‘We can’t do a deal because something’s flagged up with your heart.’

"It was deadline day and it would take a minimum of three days to find out the problem, so they couldn’t risk signing me.”

A planned operation was then shelved at the 11th hour when the ‘problem’ was thankfully diagnosed.

“When they went to do the operation they didn’t see any more insufficient heartbeats,” he added.

"They came to the conclusion that my heart’s sensitive to caffeine and I just needed to cut out coffee.

"Two weeks later I played my first game in six months against Huddersfield and it was a big relief.”