Norwich City have done the groundwork for sizing up January window transfer options.
Sporting director Ben Knapper and head coach Johannes Hoff Thorup led a busy summer overhaul to the playing squad to get City in contention for a Championship promotion tilt.
But head of recruitment, Lee Dunn, believes the Canaries are in a good position to move on any available new year targets, if City opt to bolster Thorup’s roster again.
“We’ve done a lot of work in the summer that will give us the platform now to go and do things we want to do on our terms,” said Dunn. “We’re in a position where if there are opportunities that we feel are right, maybe for the mid to long term of the club, then it’ll be something we explore.
“Often when we’ve used it, it’s been due to injuries or wanting players to go and get game time and trying to find a replacement. If you want to be proactive in that market, probably European markets are difficult to navigate because, naturally speaking, teams don’t want to sell their best players in January, mid-season.”
Dunn admitted January windows had proved a challenge for the club in recent seasons, with the likes of loan trio Ondrej Duda, Marquinhos and Sydney van Hooijdonk all having limited impact.
“If we look back at last January with Sydney, while Sydney didn’t perform as we had hoped, and probably how he hoped, and that didn’t work out it allowed Adam (Idah) to go and play regularly,” he said. “If we strip it really back, Adam was our third choice striker at the time and that obviously led to him being sold for a significant amount of money (to Celtic) in the summer.
“Adam was a player we wanted to work with. It wasn’t a case of that being the motivating factor, but he wanted to go and play games, and the reality was Josh (Sargent) and Ashley (Barnes) were playing very well. So there’s always context to positive and negative outcomes, and there’s obviously trade offs.
“Sydney was very low risk in terms of for the club, and longer term, it obviously helped us trade a player to sell for a lot of money. But the European window in January is difficult because people don’t want to lose players.
“What you find is, generally speaking, for us, in the January window, there’s probably one of two things – it’s a young player wanting to get game time, so you’re taking maybe a player on a first or second loan. Or you have players that aren’t playing at big clubs.
“Or you get a combination of both young players that aren’t playing games, and these are the types of players that are typically available when you’re looking for short term solutions.
“I’m not saying that’s the only reason why maybe some of our recruitment in those January windows haven’t been as we had hoped. But, generally speaking, it’s young players not playing games, and the risk, I guess, in those is a bit higher. But there are opportunities to be proactive.”
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