Alex Neil: 'Lewis Grabban exit made sense'

By Barney Corkhill, Editor | 12 January 2016

Norwich City manager Alex Neil says that it "made sense" for the club to sell Lewis Grabban back to Bournemouth as the striker was not in his plans.

Norwich City manager Alex Neil has said that it "made sense" for the club to sell Lewis Grabban back to Bournemouth.

The 28-year-old striker initially joined Norwich from Bournemouth in the summer of 2014, but made the reverse switch earlier this week in a deal thought to be around £8m - a significant profit for the Canaries.

Grabban had been a key figure in Norwich's promotion to the Premier League last season, but fell out of favour towards the start of this season following a number of disciplinary problems.

"We just felt, for us, he was a player who had run his course at Norwich really. He was not involved, he was not in our squads. Lewis contributed greatly to us getting promoted and started the season for us, then we had a couple of incidents afterwards, and to be honest I don't think we really recovered from that," Neil told reporters.

"I think it was one of those where Lewis had come to the conclusion that he was best suited to playing elsewhere, and we agreed with that. Sometimes players have their heads turned and get their heart set on going elsewhere, and I think when that happens at times it becomes a difficult one, as you try and get the best out of a player and get him focused on his job.

"But in Lewis's situation? There was too much water under the bridge and it just made sense, because we were not utilising his talents. We had a commodity there that wasn't supplying anything for us, so what we had to do was try and get the best value for that, re-invest it and bring someone in who can contribute."

Grabban could come up against his former club when Bournemouth host Norwich next weekend.