Rumour Mill - QPR said to have won race to land Norwich City target Craig

Peterborough United have reportedly accepted an offer from a Premier League side for one-time Norwich City target striker Craig Mackail-Smith.

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The BBC yesterday claimed a deal had been agreed between Posh and an unnamed club – although it was not immediately clear who the club is.

Canaries boss Paul Lambert refused to comment on any speculation about new players during a press conference to unveil new signing James Vaughan on Tuesday. But there are plenty of other reported suitors, with Everton, Wigan and newly-promoted QPR all chasing the former Dagenham man – and all the speculation is doing no harm when it comes to raising the price.

Chairman Darragh MacAnthony did his bit when he said: “At the moment there is anywhere between eight and 11 clubs involved. We’ve got two concrete offers and when you get into an auction you always try and push those offers up.”

The Sun claimed Norwich had jumped to the front of the queue, but word from the capital is that QPR have won the race.

There is a slight danger that the Mackail-Smith stuff becomes a saga, while many would regard the speculation linking Jimmy Bullard with Norwich as more light-hearted – not because he isn’t a good player, but because of the way some innocuous quotes on a Saturday morning TV show have been interpreted.

Bullard, according to the online version of the Daily Mail, would jump at the chance to join City, where Lambert is “keen to add experience to his squad to help boost his side’s chances of staying in the top-flight”.

The asking price for the 32-year-old midfielder is said to be around £1.5m, although there is the small matter of his salary to consider – he’s currently on £45,000 a week at Hull. Bullard, who spent the final four months of the season on loan to Ipswich, would cost Norwich in the region of £1.5m.

“I want to be playing football somewhere next season – that is top of my list,” Bullard told Soccer AM. “Norwich are a fantastic club who have done brilliantly well to get into the Premier League. So, who knows?”

Whether those comments constitute the headline, “Come and get me! Bullard reveals he’d love to play for Norwich in the Premier League” is open to debate.

The Sun also claims the asking price for Millwall striker Steve Morison is almost £3m – half a million more than City bid on Tuesday. What may be muddying the waters is the sell-on price – 25pc of any sale to his former club Stevenage.

 

there's so much crap doing the rounds about this bloke, have we ever bid for him? didn't here warnock on talksport this morning but was apparently asked about him & nothing come of it.

 

He was not asked about CMS He just said he was hoping to speak to Bernie & Flavio next week said how hard it was to speak to both at the same time and that Bernie had left football matters with Flavio, we will end up with the same starting eleven that we finished the season with

 

£750,000 would be huge for Stevenage