Grant: Give me a Gunn

CHRIS LAKEY Peter Grant is on the hunt for a goalkeeping throwback in the mould of Canaries legends Kevin Keelan and Bryan Gunn. The City manager steps up the summer hunt for new recruits to the cause this week now that the Championship season is over, and admits that the number one shirt is his priority.

CHRIS LAKEY

Peter Grant is on the hunt for a goalkeeping throwback in the mould of Canaries legends Kevin Keelan and Bryan Gunn.

The City manager steps up the summer hunt for new recruits to the cause this week now that the Championship season is over, and admits that the number one shirt is his priority.

Five keepers have come and gone from Carrow Road this season - and now Grant wants stability behind his back four in the mould of two of the club's all-time great keepers.

“I think in Norwich's top five players there are two goalkeepers in there, with 400 odd and 600 appearances or something,” he said. “That is what goalkeepers used to be and I need to get back to somebody with that quality.”

Keelan is City's all time leading appearance maker with 673 games in a 17-year career at Norwich, while Gunn played 477 times in a decade.

Chris Woods filled the position for five years and when Gunn's career ended in the late 90s, Andy Marshall and then Robert Green made the positions their own - but Green's departure for West Ham last August left a gaping hole that neither Nigel Worthington nor Peter Grant have been able to fill.

Paul Gallacher played the first 14 games of the season, but has been dropped four times by Grant - for Jamie Ashdown, Lee Camp, David Marshall and, finally, Tony Warner.

It's a yo-yo situation Grant now wants resolved, with Marshall - whose loan from Celtic was cut short by injury in the FA Cup tie at Chelsea in February - believed to be top of his shopping list.

Ashdown and Camp would appear to be out of the reckoning, while Warner's age _ he's 33 next week - and a number of other unresolved issues make a return from Fulham on a permanent basis next season unlikely.

“I am looking for a goalkeeper,” said Grant. “I have never hidden that fact. He has done very, very well for me, but there are a million reasons why he maybe won't come back.

“It depends what happens at Fulham obviously. It depends on who becomes the manager. Does the new manager like him? Does the new manager not like him? He has a year left on his contact - what sort of salary is he on? Is he willing to take a drop in his salary to come and play for us? All these questions.

“Obviously he is one I will be looking at closely, but I have not hidden the fact that we have had four or five goalkeepers in the one season.”