Shani Tarashaj, one of the brightest young talents in Swiss football, has been lined up for a move to Everton as the club prepare to let Steven Naismith move to Norwich City and try to arrange their January transfer business in advance.

Everton have offered Tarashaj, a Switzerland Under-21 international, a four-and-a-half-year contract and the player’s advisers have been in Liverpool over the last couple of days to discuss terms and take in the 4-3 defeat against Stoke City. Talks are at advanced stage but sources in Switzerland have confirmed that Grasshopper Club Zurich want him to be loaned back for the remainder of the season if, as expected, the two clubs agree a fee.

Tarashaj is a 20-year-old secondary striker or attacking midfielder who has scored eight goals in 18 games for Grasshopper this season, helping them to second position in the Super League at the point of their mid-season break, albeit 10 points behind the leaders Basel. He began the season with five goals in his first four appearances and also scored Switzerland’s goal when their under-21s lost 3-1 to England last month, in their qualifying match for the 2017 European Championship.

Roberto Martínez regards him as a creative player who can flourish at Goodison and Everton’s manager will almost certainly be needing a new attacker now Naismith is close to leaving Merseyside, with Norwich provisionally agreeing a deal that would result in the Scotland international moving to Carrow Road in the coming weeks.

Norwich tried to lure Naismith away from Everton in the late stages of the summer window but Martínez blocked the transfer at the time. Since then, however, Naismith has started only four times in the Premier League, with Romelu Lukaku and Arouna Koné figuring more prominently in Martínez’s thinking. There is also interest elsewhere for Naismith, scorer of a hat-trick against Chelsea earlier this season, but Martínez is not in a rush bearing in mind Everton now embark on five games in a two-week period, beginning with Tottenham Hotspur’s visit to Goodison on Sunday.

Martínez, who insisted Kevin Mirallas remains part of his plans, has said there will be only “tweaks” during the transfer window and the expectation is that Tarashaj will be the only incoming transfer for a club that have dropped to 11th in the league. Tarashaj, born to Albanian parents but raised in Switzerland with the option to play for either country, signed a new contract at Grasshopper in September, with his previous deal due to expire at the end of the current season. He is now contracted until 2019 and Everton will have to recognise that in the transfer fee.