Jon Rowe will train with Norwich City’s Under-21s for the foreseeable future, after indicating he was not in the right frame of mind to feature at Oxford amid transfer interest from Marseille.
Following talks on Sunday with head coach Johannes Hoff Thorup and sporting director, Ben Knapper, Rowe is not part of the first team squad for Tuesday’s League Cup tie against Stevenage at Carrow Road.
The rest of Thorup’s senior squad is training on Monday, but Rowe will link up with the development set-up from Tuesday.
Rowe indicated to the Dane less than an hour before the pre-match team meeting on Saturday morning he was not ‘motivated’ to feature at the Kassam, following news of a Friday bid from the French giants.
Reports in France since the weekend suggested Marseille could return with an improved offer, but there has been no movement since the initial approach, which is believed to be below City’s valuation for the England Under-21 international.
No other clubs are at the negotiating table with the Canaries either for Rowe, after an exploratory discussion with Leeds recently, ahead of the August 30 transfer deadline.
Thorup reiterated at those talks on Sunday there is a way back for Rowe, after the Dane had admitted following a 2-0 Oxford defeat improving the culture is now his primary focus.
“There will always be (a way back), and it’s just a matter of behaviour and how the players respond to this,” was Thorup’s post-match reaction prior to those Rowe discussions. “Of course, it’s a situation that should not happen, but you can never know what happens on Sunday.
“We can have a good conversation, and we can have a not so good conversation, you never know. What’s important for me is that I look at this group and we have to build a strong culture.
“We have to build an environment based on players that have the desire to perform for Norwich, wherever we play, because that’s important, and also for everyone around to respect that it is important that a club cannot be run by too many players.
“Not ones where they have ambitions to go somewhere else in the middle of a game day. We have to build that culture. We have to build that environment. Because it needs to be even stronger. That’s where my focus is.
“As I said in Austria (with the Adam Idah episode), sometimes things like this happens, and is tough for young players to have to go through this for maybe the first time in their careers. So it’s for us to find the best possible solution and then start working forward.”
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