Leeds United have agreed a fee with Liverpool for midfielder Lee Bowyer, who will talk to the Merseyside club early next week. Daniel Taylor and David Alexander report
Liverpool had offered either Nick Barmby or Patrik Berger as part of the £9 million deal, but Leeds insisted on the whole fee in cash to help offset their debts of £77 million.
Leeds also want to sell the French midfielder Olivier Dacourt to Juventus for around £11 million. If both deals go through the club's board will be under less pressure to sell the £30 million-rated Rio Ferdinand.
Dacourt is not keen on leaving Leeds, who he joined from Lens two years ago, but he may find himself frozen out if he does not agree to move on.
Leeds's new manager Terry Venables has admitted that the club's plc told him to raise £15 million and although he wanted to keep Bowyer, he failed to persuade him to stay.
Bowyer (25) had one year left on his contact. The midfielder, who arrived from Charlton for £2.65 million in 1996, was found not guilty of affray and causing grievous bodily harm last December, at the end of a retrial, after a group he had been socialising with in January 2000 had attacked an Asian student in Leeds city centre.
After the verdict Leeds handed Bowyer a record fine of four weeks' wages, £88,000, for breaching club rules by being under the influence of alcohol. He was transfer-listed for two days and eventually agreed to pay the fine although he refused a subsequent offer of an improved contract.
Relations with Peter Ridsdale deteriorated further when the Leeds chairman said that he would not have signed Bowyer from Charlton if he had known then what he knew now.
Dacourt had the chance to leave Leeds when the club agreed a fee with Lazio last season, but he turned down the move. Yesterday, moreover, his agent said that nothing had been resolved. "We know that Juventus are very interested and we're waiting for them to make a decision," Bruno Satin said. "It depends on whether they can sell (Edgar) Davids to Roma first because there is not a lot of money in Italy."
Satin also denied that Arsenal have been in contact.
Guardian Service
