Thorup details Norwich City success in Matej Jurasek pursuit

 Norwich City battled off late interest from ‘larger teams’ to obtain the services of Slavia Prague winger Matej Jurasek, Johannes Hoff Thorup has claimed. 

The Czechia international completed his long-awaited Carrow Road transfer earlier this week for a price estimated to be worth approximately £5.8m, signing a five-and-a-half-year deal with the club.

Jurasek was much sought after, and it’s thought that Belgian side Club Brugge and others from inside Europe were following his position.

That spurred City to boost up their interest in the highly-rated 21-year-old this month, a drawn-out chase that was ultimately confirmed on Thursday.

“We have followed him for a long time. What is most noticeable about him is arguably his left foot, where he has a strong strike,” Thorup remarked.

“He’s a terrific finisher and is excellent when he steps from outside to in. He can dribble. He can move.

He’s a technically superb player. He fits in nicely to the style that we want to play and our system.

“What was the most essential thing for us was merely to seal the agreement before any other team came in. We observed towards the end that there were certain teams, with all due respect to us, who are a little bit larger than us who began to pay some attention in him.

“We had to do that deal as quick as possible.”

City will have to wait until after the transfer window to register Jurasek as part of their Championship squad owing to post-Brexit laws governing football transactions.

Despite the delay for his debut, Thorup described the plan of action to prepare the winger for life in England to enable him to hit the ground running for Norwich.

“It’s the same with me, with you and everyone – when you sign a new player, you just want to get him in the building as soon as possible,” City’s boss stated.

“We’re going to lose out on him for roughly four games. At the end of the day, in a few of months, we will probably forget that this was the case.

The most essential thing for us was simply to get the deal done and make sure that he was signed to be our player.

“We had him in the building here for a number of days and sat with him and created a clear strategy.

There will be a few of physical performance coaches traveling to Prague to make sure he accomplishes the work that is necessary and is in a decent shape and condition.

“We tested him and some of his stats were extremely up there with some of our top performing guys. He’s in a good position and we have to make sure that it continues like way.”