James McArthur was on the brink of signing for Leicester City tonight after the club made an improved offer to sign the Scotland internationalist from Wigan Athletic.
McArthur's return to the Barclays Premier League had been mooted for some time but Burnley had seemed the most likely destination for the midfielder, capped 15 times by his country.
Yesterday the Wigan chairman, Dave Whelan, revealed that an offer of £5m from Leicester had been rejected, but that 26-year-old McArthur was available for sale at the right price.
Leicester duly upped the ante this morning in their pursuit of the player, tabling an offer in the region of £6.5m. However, despite the eagerness of Whelan to complete the sale, the finer points of the transaction were still being negotiated tonight.
McArthur played more than 120 Premier League games for Wigan before their relegation last season, and is expected to be a Leicester player in time for their home match against Arsenal on Sunday, seven days before Scotland face Germany in Dortmund.
If the deal is completed it will be good news for Hamilton, who wrote a sell-on clause into their agreement to sell McArthur to Wigan in 2010.
For much of the day, Wigan seemed in a hurry to say farewell to the Glaswegian. Whelan was quoted as saying: "Leicester came back in this morning and wanted a quick answer; it was all sorted out pretty quickly.
"We are disappointed to lose James but he can play in the Premier League again which is what he deserves. Leicester have been an absolute credit throughout the negotiations."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article