Stephen Kenny confirms England approach for Tom Cannon: 'He ...

Cannon (20) has sprung to prominence this year after an impressive loan spell with Preston that followed his Premier League breakthrough with his parent club.

The Liverpudlian scored on his Ireland U-21 debut in March and was called into train with Kenny’s senior squad in Bristol last month but did not report for duty citing tonsillitis.

It meant he did not make Kenny’s squad for the trip to Turkey ahead of Friday’s qualifier with Greece with the senior manager stating that he expected Cannon to link up with Jim Crawford’s U-21 squad for this window but movements ongoing in the background explain his absence from their trip to Austria with weekend reports of English interest accurate.

Cannon’s agent is Kenny Moyes, the brother of West Ham boss David, and discussions are planned when the June business is out of the way.

“It’s better to be honest about these things,” said Kenny. “I saw the story breaking in one of the English papers.

"Tom hasn’t said anything to me about that. Now obviously he had tonsillitis and pulled out of the camp – and he had tonsillitis to be honest with you – and it sort of made it difficult selecting him (for the seniors) because he hadn’t been doing training, he hadn’t been doing the programmes that we had set.

"He has a good attitude and is a good lad but I have spoken to his agent subsequently, before the U-21 squad was selected.

"His agent is Kenny Moyes, and he just said, ‘Let’s get this camp out of the way and we’ll come and meet you and have a chat’. He said, ‘Obviously England U-21 have made an approach’ and he just needed a bit of time to reflect and see what the situation was and wanted to speak to me after the camp, sit down and have a conversation.”

Crawford said in March that he didn’t expect Cannon, who qualifies via the grandparent rule, to follow in the footsteps of Jack Grealish and Declan Rice by defecting. The picture is less certain now. It was noted in the aftermath of the story that pictures of Irish duty were no longer visible on his Instagram. Kenny noted that Covid prevented Cannon from integrating into the Irish underage set-up and getting to know everyone around it.

"His (full) U-19 campaign didn’t happen,” he continued, “So he’s only recently been in the U-21s and had a good spell. He’s probably done better (at Preston) than could have been expected. It’s early days. It’s sort of new information in the last while. I wasn’t aware of it before to be honest, when Kenny Moyes rang me and said that he just needed time to breathe and see what the situation was.”

Kenny declined to get into what approach he would take in the meetings with Cannon, stressing that he didn’t want any focus to be taken away from the young strikers that remain at his disposal who are fully committed.

“It is what is is,” he said. “I’d rather focus on the players we have here, do you know that kind of way? I’m very happy with the strikers we have here. He still has a lot of improving to do but he seems a good lad. I actually don’t know him that well because he’s not been in our system that long. Obviously I’ve had a few conversations with him. We’re just focused on the players that we have here. We’re delighted with the strike-force we have here.”

Under FIFA eligibility rules, Cannon would be committed to England if he switched to play for their U-21 side (currently managed by ex-Irish international Lee Carsley) because he already played competitive U-19 matches for Ireland in late 2019 when he was drafted in to the year above his age group.