Queens Park Rangers wanted to bring Jermain Defoe to Loftus Road – but Harry Redknapp’s side lost out to Premier League rivals Sunderland.
Jermain Defoe has admitted that he was on the verge of signing for Harry Redknapp’s Queens Park Rangers before he returned to English shores with Sunderland instead, speaking to Sky Sports.
There is a reason why Redknapp is famed for re-signing his former players. Defoe, after all, is just one of a whole host of Harry heroes who represented the veteran boss for at least two clubs, alongside Niko Kranjcar, Peter Crouch, Younes Kaboul and co.
And with the England international desperate to return to the Premier League at the start of 2015, it came as a surprise to absolutely nobody when Redknapp tried to bring his former Tottenham and Portsmouth favourite to Loftus Road.
“I got a phone call from Harry and I nearly went to QPR,” Defoe, who is still leading the line for Rangers at 37, admits.
“They were going to match (Sunderland’s) deal with the four years, but for whatever reason that didn’t happen.”
In the end, Defoe put pen to paper on a £70,000-a-week switch to Wearside instead, according to The Guardian. And talk of a ‘sliding doors moment’.
Thanks to the veteran goal-poacher, Sunderland narrowly avoided relegation from the Premier League while QPR were consigned to an immediate return to the Championship, finishing bottom of the table despite the best efforts of Charlie Austin.
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