Portmouth have won the race to sign Luke McGee on loan from Tottenham, according to a reliable journalist.
Sun correspondent Alan Nixon took to Twitter on Monday evening to report that the goalkeeper, 21, is heading to the League One side for the upcoming season after Spurs gave the deal the green light.
This comes after the print edition of the Sun (Sunday 9 July, page 65) claimed that Portsmouth were leading the race to land McGee for the 2017-18 season but Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino wanted another goalkeeper as cover before sanctioning his exit.
Transfer expert Nixon, who has a column in the Sun, claimed on his personal Twitter account that there has now been a U-turn from Tottenham and they have decided to send the rising star “out early after all”.
It will be a second consecutive loan spell for Spurs academy product McGee, who made a huge impression at Peterborough, also in League One, last season.
The goalkeeper scooped the Posh players’ player-of-the-year prize after keeping 10 clean sheets in 45 appearances in all competitions.
Extensive negotiations took place with Spurs chairman Daniel Levy about a permanent deal but the League One outfit’s director of football Barry Fry said last month that their pursuit of the player had been abandoned.
“I spoke to Daniel Levy myself and he said that they’ll most probably sell him, but it won’t be until August,” Fry said to BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. “I passed the message on to the manager and the chairman, and they have told me to move on.”
McGee, who has never played for Tottenham’s first team, has a contract with the club that runs until 2019.
He is behind Hugo Lloris and Michel Vorm in the keeper pecking order at White Hart Lane, while there were reports on Monday that the club are closing in on another goalkeeper signing with talks at an advanced stage.