Arsenal flop linked with Norwich as Canaries target striker

Chris Hughton and his band of goal-shy Canaries are unwisely tracking Arsenal outcast Marouane Chamakh to solve their problems in the final third.

Norwich are 8/5 shots to be relegated this season and, after improving a great deal at the back in recent weeks, putting the ball in the net remains their biggest issue.

A meagre tally of eight goals means that only Sunderland are worse off than them in the scoring stakes and Grant Holt has bagged just short of half of them.

He’s hardly been prolific but, should something happen to their workhorse centre forward then they would really be up against it up top – it would be a big ask for Steve Morison to replicate his double-figure goal haul last term, for instance.

Chamakh has been highlighted as a potential solution to this problem and, with Arsenal looking to offload their Moroccan bench-warmer to free up wage-bill space ahead of a January recruitment drive, they will be open to accepting a reduced offer for his services.

There are two blatant stumbling blocks preventing this deal from going through though – the first is whether Delia Smith is going to stump up the money for his wages and the second is whether his ego would allow him to take the significant drop in standard.

It’s likely they’d have to convince Chamakh to take a pay decrease for him to agree to the Carrow Road switch and this doesn’t seem like something he’d be keen on doing.

When Arsenal signed him as a free agent from Bordeaux, Chamakh was one of the most sought-after forwards in Europe given his ridiculous scoring record in France and there was a great deal expected of him upon arrival in the Premier League.

He failed to live up to any of this hype and, as a result, now finds himself so far down the Arsenal pecking order that the only thing that could tempt him to move to Norfolk would be the guarantee of first-team football.

If he couldn’t score goals in an Arsenal side that generally creates chances for fun, however, it’s difficult to see how he’s going to fare any better in Norwich yellow.

It’s the physical demands and intensity of the Premier League that he struggles with, something that Ligue One failed to prepare him for. Obviously, the same flaws would see him come a cropper once again if he moved to another team in this division, which is why Chris Hughton would be better served investing what little money he has elsewhere.

All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date