Christmas has come early for Norwich fans with the form of Teemu Pukki boosting City’s survival hopes, but sources in Finland believe bids will be made for him.
The Finnish hitman bagged his sixth Premier League goal on Saturday in the Canaries’ stunning 3-2 win over champions Manchester City, making the rest of the division sit up and take notice of the deadliest finisher in England right now.
No other player in the country has scored more goals in the top four divisions over the past 18 months with Pukki’s 29 Championship strikes last season now looking like a precursor to the form he has now displayed in the top-flight.
But that has led to talk of interest from bigger fish in the Premier League pond and possible bids being made in January for the 29-year-old Norwich star.
Overseas clubs could also be circling – ready to take advantage of any weakness from within Carrow Road or desire from the player to pack his bags and move elsewhere.
But this talk hasn’t come from the notoriously sensational tabloid press or the vast array of TV pundits wheeled out by the wall-to-wall domestic coverage of the Premier League.
It is in Finland where the football experts are now openly talking about Pukki’s future not necessarily being aligned with Norwich City for the rest of the season.
The ex-Celtic, Schalke and Brondby striker committed to a new three-year contract in July with the option of a further year in the club’s favour, so no-one at Norwich should be panicking.
Pukki, a name that translates to ‘Santa’ in Finnish, has been a gift for the media back home who are obsessed with the exploits of their Kotka-born star, particularly this season.
The coverage reached fever-pitch over the weekend, leading Marko Leppänen of MTV Sports to speculate that Norwich could sell him for a huge profit in the January transfer window.
And Jari Virtanen, writing for newspaper Hameen Sanomat, suggested Pukki could earn ten times the weekly wage he gets from his latest Canaries contract if he were to join one of the big boys.
The pundit did come to his senses later in the article when he admitted that selling Pukki even for as much as £50million might not be good business for the club given that the reward for staying up in terms of TV money is estimated to be in the region of £100million.
However, it is hard to deny that Pukki has now become a hot commodity in football and Norwich may soon be receiving big offers for a player who cost them nothing at all.
