Nigerian playmaker Ovie Ejaria poised to join Reading from Liverpool in £3.5m four year deal

NIGERIAN playmaker Ovie Ejaria is poised to end his six-year association with English Premier League champions Liverpool and join Championship side Reading where he spent last season on loan in a £3.5m deal .

Ejaria, 22, who is on the radar of Super Eagles head coach Gernot Rohr, is believed to have recently made a switch application to Fifa that would enable him play for Nigeria having featured for the England U20 and U21 teams. A member of the England 2017 U20 World Cup-winning team, Ejaria started his career at Arsenal as a kid, from where he left for Liverpool in 2014.

Reading has been under an embargo by the English Football League from signing players due to past financial irregularities but this time has been granted special permission to sign Ejaria. Apparently, Ejaria will sign a four-year contract with Reading and could feature in tomorrow's pre-season friendly against Tottenham Hotspurs.

Ejaria has spent the last one-and-a-half seasons at the Madejski Stadium, scoring four goals in 55 appearances across all competitions and has also had loan spells with Sunderland and Glasgow Rangers since joining Liverpool. He joined the Liverpool academy in 2014 and was promoted to the senior team in 2016, making a total of eight appearances for the club in six years, with two of those appearances coming in the Premier League.

Over the last season-and-a-half, Ejaria has played 55 games for Reading during two loan stints, the first of which began in January 2019. He scored three goals and provided five assists for The Royals in the 2019/20 season in 36 league appearances.