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Coventry City contract rebel Bassala Sambou is believed to be heading to Everton in the summer.

The 18-year-old Sky Blues Academy striker has refused to sign his first professional deal with his home town club and, the Telegraph understands, will join the Merseysiders in the close season.

Sambou has caught the eye with 25 goals this season, most of which have come for the Under-18s in the league and FA Youth Cup while hitting four in the Under-21s.

Manager Tony Mowbray has offered the teenager a route into the senior squad at the Ricoh Arena by telling him that he would be part of the club’s pre-season plans where he’d get an opportunity to push for a place in the first team.

However, the former Cardinal Wiseman schoolboy who joined the club from Coventry Jaguar junior football club at the age of 11, appears ready to take a chance on a Premier League move.

“We are just a victim of when players come out of their scholarship and there’s a natural gap between their first year professional contract and there’s a window of opportunity to leave if they want to,” said Mowbray, who revealed that City offered him more than the going rate to keep him.

Watch Andy Turner on Sambou's decision to leave Sky Blues

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“They have taken up that option not to sign after we made a pretty good offer beyond what we might have offered normal scholars. He’s a young boy with huge potential and yet they want to go down another route.

“I had long chats with him and his advisors and think the career path would be much better at this club than going to the Premier League and finding himself in a pool of 20 or 30 under 21-year-olds all striving for the same thing and where he might never surface, of course, whereas here I think he would have possibly been around our first team squad and maybe off the bench and getting some first team minutes next season.

Story link: 'Bass had a fantastic opportunity at Sky Blues'

“But they have taken the decision to move on and let’s see where his career goes from here.”

Everton have a recent record of snapping up teen potential and promoting them into the first team at Goodison, as they have done with Brendan Galloway who signed as an 18-year-old from MK Dons and, two years later, is a regular while 21-year-old defender John Stones signed from Barnsley three years ago.