Norwich City face a battle to hold onto player-of-the-year Gabby Sara in the transfer window, according to sporting director Stuart Webber.

The club chief revealed in a wide-ranging 50 minute interview with the Pinkun Sara’s first season in England has attracted interest from ‘big clubs’.

Sara arrived from south America last summer for a reported initial £6m as the first foray into a new market for the Canaries.

Webber is braced for big-money bids for the attacking midfielder.

This is a transcript from his sitdown at Carrow Road.

The interest we’ve got in Sara is big at the minute, from big clubs. Everyone’s worked out this is a top player, this is a proper player. I’m pretty sure we’ll have a good chance to keep it in this summer. But we’ll be under pressure from these clubs.

For our club it’s been a huge step for us (to scout in south America). If I had been sat here in 2017 and said we would sign two players direct from south America I would probably have laughed. That’s where we managed to build our infrastructure. And I think we’ve got the results of that.

I think even with (Marcelino) Nunez he showed enough to feel his second season could be quite exciting. He needs a break up because he has pretty much had 18 months of football. Even during the World Cup he played two friendlies for Chile, which was less than helpful, and he came back injured.

A rest is going to do him the world to good. But I think South America is going to become a big market for this club. And it’s something that I’m so proud of the work done by Mariela (Nisotaki) and Lee (Dunn). We’ve got two full time scouts in South America who work incredibly hard. This has become possible because of them and their work, not because of me. I haven’t got the time to be in South America. That’s why we have a recruitment department.

The work they have done, the bravery they’ve shown, and fair play to Dean Smith as well because last summer when Lee is presenting Marcelino and Gabby to us, it was much easier for Dean to go, ‘I’d rather take a safer option and get an established Championship player’, but he saw the bigger picture for the club in terms of we need to recruit players that would be potential assets for us.

If we can get one right from that market, my God, it can open up that market to us big time. And that’s what it’s done. We have Portuguese twitter feeds and stuff like that. We’re trying to really grow our brand out there.

Not from a point of view of trying to sell a load of shirts in Brazil, because we understand where we are in the pecking order as a football club. But it is about people knowing about us in south America and knowing that Norwich could be our gateway to a big club in Europe. That’s great for us.