TIM Sherwood was attempting to overcome a late snag this morning in his bid to complete a £4 million move to Tottenham Hotspur.

As we revealed last night, the Blackburn Rovers skipper had lengthy negotiations with Spurs yesterday and decided to sleep on their offer.

But the player and his representative Eric Hall revealed that there was still one more hurdle to climb before the deal could finally be concluded.

That seems likely to involve personal terms, as there has already been a good deal of speculation that what Spurs are offering does not match what Sherwood could have had if he had signed the new deal which was put on the table at Ewood.

"There has been a bit of a hiccup," confirmed Hall this morning.

"But I am quite hopeful it can be sorted out today," said Hall. Sherwood himself also admitted that he had not reached agreement with Tottenham last night, although there were reports to the contrary.

"There is still some talking to do," he said after meeting George Graham and David Pleat for detailed discussions.

"Spurs have offered me a contract to the end of the season and for four years after that."

Director of football Pleat, however, seemed optimistic.

"George and I have met with Tim and we are hopeful that something will happen this morning," said Pleat.

If terms were settled today, then Sherwood was booked in for the medicals and would be a Tottenham player in time for their game against Coventry on Saturday.

There was a lot of heart-searching at Ewood before Rovers finally gave the go-ahead last week for talks to take place - having accepted Tottenham's offer.

They did it in the wake of the player, who was still tied to a lengthy contract, refusing their final offer of new terms.

And chief executive John Williams stressed today that he considered the club had made an "excellent" offer in their efforts to keep Sherwood happy.

The captain seemed to have been satisfied about the club's renewed ambitions under Brian Kidd.

But he was still dis-satisfied with the financial aspects of the new offer.

Rovers could have held him to his contract but decided, in the end, to let him go.

"Until a deal is actually done it is difficult to comment but I do expect it to happen," said Williams this morning.

"And I can now confirm that we have agreed a transfer fee with Tottenham of £4 million.

"When this happened, there were two ways we could go.

"We could stick, because there was a three and a half year relatively new contract in place.

"The alternative was to say that, after seven years service and under the circumstances, we will not stand in your way. But that depended on whether we received what we believed to be a good offer."

Rovers believe they have received a fair offer, though 30 per cent of the profit will go to Norwich under a sell-on clause when he moved to Ewood in 1992.

Dennis Wise will miss Blackburn Rovers' re-arranged away game against Chelsea on February 17, after the Stamford Bridge star was sent off during last night's FA Cup replay win over Oxford. It was Wise's fourth red card of the season.

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