Jermain Defoe is set to join Leicester City from Toronto FC. The Premier League’s bottom club have jumped to the front of the queue for the striker’s signature, ahead of Queens Park Rangers, among others, and they are confident of closing the deal.

Harry Redknapp, the QPR manager, is on record as saying that Defoe was prominent on his list of January targets but it is Leicester who have made their move, and they hope that he can score the goals to help them avoid relegation back into the Championship.

Defoe, 32, might need a little bit of time to regain his top-level condition, having not played since the end of the MLS season in October but his goal-scoring pedigree in the Premier League – at West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur and Portsmouth – is proven.

His record at Toronto was also good, even if his surprise move to North America from Tottenham last year has not worked out the way that everybody had hoped it would. He scored 11 goals in 19 games, including two on his debut in Seattle, causing tremendous excitement in Canada.

But he ran out of steam, he suffered from injury and he missed matches. He was supposed to help Toronto to a first play-off appearance but the club fell short and his situation was soured by a statement made last September by Tim Leiweke, Toronto’s president.

Leiweke questioned Defoe’s commitment and said that “if you don’t want to be here, get the hell out of our way”. Nobody has previously questioned Defoe in such a manner and he admitted in a Guardian interview last October that it had hurt.

Defoe, who was overlooked by the England manager, Roy Hodgson, for last summer’s World Cup finals, has long seemed likely to leave Toronto. Leicester intend to provide him with a fresh challenge.