Sky Sports Reporter Keith Downie reports that Newcastle United defender Grant Hanley is having his Norwich City medical ahead of a move to the Sky Bet Championship club. The Scotland international has struggled for consistent game time since moving to the Magpies from Blackburn Rovers a year ago.
Sky Sports yesterday revealed that a fee between the two clubs had been agreed. The player did feature in Newcastle’s Carabao Cup defeat to Nottingham Forest recently, but has played no part in any Premier League game so far. Hanley has been given permission to leave the Scottish national camp to push through the deal before Thursday’s deadline.
The Toon Army paid £5.5million to snap up the player last July and the club are hopeful of recouping as much of that as possible. It remains to be seen what the agreed fee for this deal is, but Norwich certainly are in need of defensive reinforcements following a poor start to the season under Daniel Farke. Sean Raggett has recently signed from Lincoln City, but was allowed to return to Danny Cowley’s side until January.
Hanley is proven at Championship level, mainly from his time at Blackburn. The commanding centre back will now fight with the likes of Russell Martin, Christoph Zimmermann, Timm Klose and Marcel Franke for a place in Farke’s starting eleven.
The player certainly will be a little rusty considering the last league game he played was all the way back in April. In total, he played only ten league matches for Newcastle since his move and a new challenge in joining Norwich will surely bring about benefits to him and also the national team.
