The Celtic manager Neil Lennon has said that the Premier league club Norwich City should not be wasting their time in trying to sign the Celtic player Gary Hooper. The striker has been linked with a move to the Premier league for quite a while now. Norwich even had two bids rejected recently. The bids were thought to be in the region of £ 5 million. However, Lennon has urged the Chief Executive of the club not to consider any offer for the player because of the lack of time to find a replacement. A few weeks after the end of the transfer window, Celtic will be playing against the Italian champions Juventus in the last 16 stage of the Champions league.
Celtic have valued the player at around £ 8 million, but even if Norwich manage to match that figure Celtic will now not be looking to sell the player according to Lennon. He has also said that Tottenham are also interested in the player. Due to the rebuff from the Scottish club, it is thought that Norwich will be focusing their attention on the Leeds United forward Luciano Becchio. Lennon has also said that he would like to ideally strengthen the squad before the end of the transfer window.
“We’ve had two bids in from Norwich and that’s been it. It won’t surprise me if another bid comes in, but the answer will be the same. That (Spurs) is just speculation. People are working hard down the road, maybe to unsettle the player for their own reasons. I have left Gary to it. I spoke to him maybe a week to 10 days ago. He is playing brilliantly, it hasn’t seemed to have affected him. Everyone has a price, but the timing would be so wrong for everything we want,” said Lennon.