Harry Kewell is expected to complete a £7 million move to Liverpool today in time to join his new team-mates when they leave for a training camp in Switzerland later this week.
Negotiations between Liverpool and Leeds United, which began last Friday, continued yesterday and agreement was reached on the fee although fine-tuning is still required on the structure of the payments. However, neither club expects last-minute hitches.
Although Kewell and his agent Bernie Mandic shied from commenting publicly, the player is due to confirm the move, somewhat bizarrely, in a pre-recorded interview with the Australian TV station Channel 9 this morning.
"I have been speaking with the club concerned for over six months," said the 24-year-old forward who added, in a taster screened last night, he was a boyhood Liverpool supporter. "Everything seems to be right for me to go there."
Leeds offered Kewell to Liverpool for £9 million in January in a desperate bid to reduce their huge debts, though the manager Gerard Houllier preferred to wait until that price came down.
Once the financial aspects of the transfer have been settled - Kewell has already agreed personal terms - he should undergo a medical today and then put pen to paper on a four-year deal worth £60,000 a week.
Leeds, who must also reach a compensation settlement with Kewell regarding the year left on his contract as he did not ask for a transfer, expect to announce the deal to the London Stock Exchange within 24 hours.
Mandic flew to Liverpool from Paris yesterday to confirm what will be the Premiership's biggest incoming transfer of the summer. The stagnation of the market is such that Kewell's becomes only the sixth seven-figure move of the close season. Kewell's signing will be welcomed by Houllier, who also counts the £3.5 million Steve Finnan and the back-from-loan French teenagers Anthony Le Tallec and Florent Sinama Pongolle in his strengthened squad.
The Leeds manager Peter Reid will also be relieved at the end of the saga. Tomorrow he welcomes the Crystal Palace winger Julian Gray, available for a nominal fee after he rejected a £4,000-a-week deal, for a trial at Thorp Arch.
Reid is also interested in Keith Gillespie, released by Blackburn last week and who has rejected the chance to sign for Leicester City, while the Leeds manager also hopes to return to Sunderland with a £1.3 million bid for Matt Piper, a forward he bought from Leicester for £2.5 million last summer.
Meanwhile, Manchester United will make an improved bid to Paris St-Germain this week for their Brazilian forward Ronaldinho in a desperate attempt to prevent Alex Ferguson's principal transfer target joining Real Madrid. United's initial offer, worth around £15 million, was dismissed by the PSG president Francis Graille last week.
The 23-year-old's agent and brother Roberto Assis returned to France yesterday to talk to representatives of Chelsea and Barcelona, with Ronaldinho anxious his future is resolved by Thursday when he is due back at the Parisian club for pre-season training.
PSG are resigned to losing the midfielder, though they hope to persuade him to scrap a clause in his contract which entitles him to 15 per cent of any transfer fee. Their first choice remains selling him to Real, whose offer is financially the most attractive and who intend to loan the player back to his former club for a year.
Dennis Bergkamp is contemplating retirement from football if he cannot reach agreement with Arsenal over a new deal.
"We have said constantly that we are still discussing with Arsenal," said Bergkamp's agent Rob Jansen. "We have said that we are not very happy with the way that discussions are going but Dennis wants to stay at Arsenal."
"He is not desperate to stay and it is ridiculous what some people are saying he has been offered. He always said he wanted to finish his career with a bang - and at Arsenal. If that cannot happen he will quit football." ... Guardian Service
