Norwich City look to have beaten Queens Park Rangers to signing Glasgow Celtic’s Gary Hooper.
Reports indicate that Norwich and Celtic have agreed to a fee for Hooper and that the striker has penned a four year deal with the Canaries. Hooper’s transfer to the Premier League side will be complete after the Englishman undergoes a medical on Thursday.
A deal to bring Hooper to QPR appeared to be done-and-dusted when reports emerged on Wednesday that the Canaries and Hoops had agreed to a $8.4 million (£5.5m) transfer fee. R’s manager Harry Redknapp sounded confident that the deal was done.
“It looks like it’s on its way to being done. Negotiations have gone well,” Redknapp said. “He’s in the last year of his contract, so it’s a good deal for everybody. It’s good for Celtic to get the kind of money they are getting and hopefully it will be a great deal for QPR.”
But in a matter of 24 hours, the tide appears to have turned in the favor of the Canaries.
Earlier this morning Norwich manager Chris Hughton spoke of the transfer to the Eastern Daily Press: “We are still working very hard,” Hughton said. “It is very difficult for me with the eight-hour time difference, but even with the conversations I am having with the chief scout it is trying to find the right times. Nothing imminent, but we are still working.”
And now, that work has apparently paid off as the Canaries and Celtic agreed to the same $8.4 million fee that QPR had offered.
For Norwich, the deal for Hooper represents the latest in a summer of impressive transfer deals that includes Ricky von Wolfsfinkle, Leroy Fer, Nathan Redmond, Martin Olsson and Javier Garrido. Expect Hughton to pair Hooper up top with the clever van Wolfsfinkle, which could form one of more underrated strike-partnerships in this year’s Premier League.
For QPR, they will feel hard-done by losing out on a player they came so close to signing. But with new-boy Grant Holt as well as Loic Remy, Jamie Mackie and Bobby Zamora still on the books, Redknapp still possesses the firepower to get his side promoted back into the Premier League.
