Fabio Borini will have a medical at Milan on Thursday as part of a proposed £5.3m transfer from Sunderland. Providing all proceeds smoothly, the 26-year-old Italian forward will join on an initial one-year loan, with Milan paying £1m up front and the rest of the fee to follow when the deal becomes permanent next summer.

Borini had been expected to join Lazio but, with the Rome club balking at meeting his £35,000-a-week wages, Milan stepped in and appear to have hijacked the transfer of a striker who has previously played for Chelsea, Roma and Liverpool but rarely looked like fulfilling his potential.

Borini, who has scored a modest 16 league goals in the past five years, frequently disappointed at Sunderland but argued he was too often asked to play out of position on the wings and instructed to do more tracking back than attacking.

He was keen to leave the newly relegated Championship club where takeover talks continue. Ellis Short, Sunderland’s owner, is negotiating with a German consortium about a potential £85m buy-out and has said he will abandon talks if an agreement in principle has not been reached by early July.

In the interim Sunderland remain without a manager, leaving Robbie Stockdale, the first-team coach, in charge of pre-season training when the players return after their summer break on Thursday.

Should they eventually buy Sunderland – and, even if a provisional agreement is struck, due diligence would still have to be completed and the takeover approved by the Football League – the unnamed consortium are said to be keen on appointing a German coach. Jens Keller, the Union Berlin coach, is widely touted as a preferred candidate of potential new owners apparently anxious to do their transfer market shopping in Germany’s second tier.

Should talks collapse and Short remain in control of the club, Martin Bain, Sunderland’s chief executive, is expected to attempt to install Simon Grayson, the Preston North End manager, as David Moyes’s successor.