Fulham in move for £10m Kanu

Fulham manager Jean Tigana was today preparing a bid for Arsenal's Nwankwo Kanu.

The Nigerian striker has become surplus to requirements at Highbury after the club's summer spending spree and Premiership newcomer Tigana wants to bring in another front man before the season starts.

Preliminary talks have been held between the two clubs but they are not believed to be close to agreeing a fee.

Arsenal are seeking around £10 million for Kanu but may be prepared to lower their valuation in order to complete a sale.

Manager Arsene Wenger has spent more than £26m recruiting Francis Jeffers from Everton, Giovanni Van Bronckhurst from Rangers and Junichi Inamoto from Gamba Osaka and the club are keen to recoup some of their outlay.

The arrival of Jeffers has also increased the already intense competition for places in the Arsenal front line, with Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Sylvain Wiltord as well as Kanu fighting for places.

Bergkamp and Kanu thought they suffered unfairly from Wenger's striker rotation policy last season before Jeffers joined and the sale of Kanu would make life easier for the manager as well as reducing the wage bill.

Tigana has been trying to strengthen his attacking options all summer and previously targeted West Ham's Frederic Kanoute and Jan Koller when he was at Anderlecht.

His front line of Louis Saha, Luis Boa Morte and Barry Hayles was formidable in Division One last term with all three among the top scorers at that level but Tigana would like to have more depth in his squad.

Boa Morte, who completed a £1.7m move from Southampton to Craven Cottage this summer after a season on loan, is suspended for the first three games of the new campaign leaving Fulham short of options. They play Manchester United at Old Trafford in their first fixture.

Fulham have strengthened their squad in every department other than attack, spending more than £15m.

Meanwhile, Patrick Vieira has not been given a new deal by Arsenal.

It was assumed in some quarters that, now that he has made peace with the club following a summer of controversy, the new accord might have been helped by a pay rise.

That is not the case. Arsenal fans were stunned in the summer by a series of articles in The Sun newspaper purporting to be interviews with Vieira. In the articles he was reported to have been highly critical of Arsenal's summer signings and other squad members and to have expressed a determination to leave Highbury.

This weekend in the News of the World, which like The Sun is owned by News International, Vieira described the earlier articles as "Lies, lies, lies." And today Vieira reiterated his commitment to the London club, going further than he did in his News of the World interview.

In the Sunday tabloid he said he would leave whenever he wanted to but today Vieira said he would only leave Arsenal if and when everybody concerned had agreed about a move.

The 25-year-old midfield player, speaking in Nantes where France play Denmark in a friendly tomorrow night, said: "Everything that was said (in the summer) was false and I am looking for the person who is responsible. I was anxious because the words appeared to come directly from me and the fans may have been afraid that I would drop the club after five years.

"It also seemed as though I was insulting my colleagues like Henry and Robert Pires. I called Wenger straight away. He knew very well that I would never say such things about the club or the players." And he added: "I love Arsenal and I love the club. It may be that one day I will leave but when I do so it will be with my head held high, like a lord. Everybody concerned will have agreed."

Vieira said he was pleased by the influx of new players at the club after Wenger's spending spree in the close season that brought Sol Campbell, Jeffers, Richard Wright, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Junichi Inamoto to Arsenal.

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