Clough Wants Hooper

Scunthorpe striker Gary Hooper is becoming a much coveted striker and Nigel Clough has admitted that he’d be interested in signing him.

The 22-year-old is gaining much attention, from the Championship and some Premier League clubs, and this doesn’t surprise Clough.

“That is not a surprise, especially when he scores a hat-trick two weeks before the end of the season like he did against Bristol City at the weekend.

He is a player who has done well against us.”

The Rams boss, who watched Hooper again during the week, doesn’t think we’d have much chance of signing him if Premier League sides do follow up an early interest but if it’s limited to Championship sides Clough feels we’d have a chance.

“It might be that we get priced out of it, I don’t know, but if he is one we identify as a definite target than we would hope to be in there bidding.

If Premiership clubs come in, there is no competition really, but if it is clubs from the Championship I would hope that if we decide to go for him we would be in with a chance.”

Clough was talking to the Evening Telegraph.

Hooper has scored 18 goals for Scunthorpe this season to help them avoid relegation and does have a good goalscoring record with the club. Nigel Adkins wants to keep him at Glanford Park but he’ll have a fight on his hands to do this, I also think that we’d have a fight to finance a move to bring him to Pride Park as well though.