Johannes Hoff Thorup insists Norwich City will be in the market for any player who can achieve their Championship promotion mission this summer.
City’s play-off bid looks to be over for the Dane’s debut season, with Norwich 11th and eight points outside the top six ahead of Sunderland’s Tuesday night visit.
But the transfer planning is already underway, and a permanent deal for Manchester City youngster Jacob Wright looks on the cards.
City have a £2.3m buy option to purchase the 19-year-old, who indicated after the weekend defeat at Plymouth he is loving life at Carrow Road.
Wright fits the overall recruitment focus on rising talent, but Thorup is not ruling out older additions or proven Championship performers.
“Let’s say if we sign 10 players, then I’ll expect that seven or eight of them will be young players with a big potential, but of course, also players that can do something for now,” he said. “Above that, two or three of them could be players with a little bit more experience, who could go directly into becoming a part of a core leadership group and take even more responsibility in the games.
“For us, we definitely have some already in the building that we can keep building on. But that’s also a market for us. It’s a tricky market, because you obviously don’t want to pay too much for a player that is 29 or 30 or 31.
“You have to be really, really careful, but also you have to be covering a lot of leagues all around the world to find the right player for the right price.”
That check list will include domestic options, after the Dane’s first experience of the English Championship.
“With all respect we lost the game on Saturday to a team that had 100 passes. That’s a little bit more than one pass per minute,” he said. “And that’s also a part of the beauty of this league, there’s so many different teams, but it’s also teams where they play on a level or in a way that is different to what you see in other leagues.
“You have to be prepared for it, you have to have an understanding of what it takes to be the team that play like that, and you have to have the experience and the knowledge and also the qualities to be the team that can deal with that.
“It’s fair to say that we definitely look at the Championship to see if there’s any players available for us who would like to be a part of the way we do things.”
Citizens’ youngster Wright was clear in his desire to stay beyond his loan move, when questioned at Home Park, and Thorup had already publicly indicated he wants the same.
“It’s a far better comment than if he had said the opposite. We have a position where the coach likes the player, the player likes the club, and I think that’s a good foundation for good discussion after the end of the season,” said Thorup. “No matter whether he performed well the other day or how he performs against Sunderland that’s not how we deal with contract situations. It is never just purely down to one game or one performance.
“But he’s in a good place, and I think he’s a great player. It says more about him than probably about us, because he was very focused on finding the right club for him in his next step of his development as a player.
“He clearly felt we were a club that was right for him in terms of how he wants to play. It’s positive he wanted to be here, because it’s obviously a player that we also like.”
The Dane also gave an update on the clutch of soon to be out-of-contract players, headed by Angus Gunn.
“With some of them we are getting closer to that (clarity). I also appreciate that now is probably not the time to go into too many details about that,” he said. “I’ve been around them for eight months time now so I am pretty sure I know who we can extend with, and who we should probably accept they will leave or find another place to play. That’s fair to say. But we also have to be careful about the timing.”
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