Hoddle lines up £700,000 Petit
Tottenham are hoping to land Chelsea midfielder Emmanuel Petit for around £700,000.
The rash of new signings at Stamford Bridge will leave the former Arsenal player some distance from the teamsheet - and the fee would at least put something back in the Chelsea coffers.
For Spurs it will be a case of better late than never as previous manager Gerry Francis had high hopes of signing Petit from Monaco until Arsenal brought him to England in 1997.
Petit then left for Barcelona in 2000 before switching to Chelsea for £7.5million the following year, despite further interest from White Hart Lane.
Spurs are still tracking Marseille's 24-year-old Cyril Chapuis, the striker they watched last season. Defender Christian Ziege will miss the start of the season after undergoing further surgery on a thigh injury.
Spurs' German wing-back sustained the original injury on Boxing Day when he suffered a dead leg against Charlton.
The problem became life-threatening when his thigh ballooned to twice its normal size later that night and Ziege was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.
It appeared that Ziege - who missed the rest of last season - had made a full recovery but the 31-year-old has been forced to pull out of the club's tour of South Africa and have an operation to remove scar tissue.
Boss Glenn Hoddle expects him to be out for about a month. Ziege said: 'It's annoying. I have lost six months over this and now I must walk on crutches again.'
