CHRIS LAKEY Glenn Roeder has set his sights high as he continues to search for new blood to help haul the Canaries to safety. The City manager has just missed out on a young striker with a one in three Premier League strike rate and a top quality Championship player - but has seen his hopes curtailed by injury problems at their clubs.

CHRIS LAKEY

Glenn Roeder has set his sights high as he continues to search for new blood to help haul the Canaries to safety.

The City manager has just missed out on a young striker with a one in three Premier League strike rate and a top quality Championship player - but has seen his hopes curtailed by injury problems at their clubs.

"I came very close yesterday," said Roeder. "I know close is no good, but I came very close to getting a striker that would, I think, have made people sit up and take notice of hopefully me being able to bring some players into the club where the fans recognise and say, 'well, we wouldn't normally have thought we'd get a player like that'.

"I still think we might be able to get this player, but not just yet, it might be in three or four weeks' time, but we need one now."

Asked whether he was a Premier League player, Roeder said: "Very much so, absolutely. He's got a record of a goal every three games in the Premiership and he is still young."

But while the player - who could well be Shola Ameobi, a former player of Roeder's at St James' Park whose 'identikit' fits the description - may be available in a few weeks' time, that's little use to the City boss, who believes it unlikely he would move to Norwich on a permanent basis.

"I don't think so, he is too good, he is a real Premier League player," he said. "The manager doesn't fancy him, but because he has got a couple of injuries in that position he feels he just has to get those players fit again."

Roeder's alternative to good Premier League fringe players is ones with proven Championship quality.

"There are one or two players just recently, if you look, that have been in Championship teams, have done very well and then they get to the Premiership they come back to the Championship and do very well again," he said. "There is one shining example of that at the moment that we are trying to do something about, although I am not sure the manager - who would like to help - will be able to because he has got one or two injuries at his club at the moment.

"We have got a list now that we are working through and it is a combination between the managers saying, 'yes you can have them on loan', and what I said after the game the other night - those players being motivated enough to want to play football when they are out of their current first team and knowing the fact that their managers are prepared to loan them out."

Roeder has yet to fill the spare seat in his dug-out, having failed to lure one of his two choices to Carrow Road as a coach. The rumour was that he had gone to former club Newcastle for their senior Academy and goalkeeper coach Adam Sadler, but all Roeder would say was that the man in question had decided to stay after being "promoted" at his club.

"But there was another I rated equally as much - if I could have had two I would have had both of them," he said. "I am going to speak to his manager and it will be a big promotion for him.

"He's a young coach who has been very successful where he has been. He has produced a lot of players for the first team at the club he has been at now for five or six years and he is now ready to step up to senior level."

"And he knew he was coming to Newcastle with me had I stayed. I have always wanted this person as a coach to work with me.

"I would like to think he (his manager) wouldn't stand in his way - it would be wrong if he did."