Football: Leeds fight off Atletico's attention

LEEDS UNITED have rejected a pounds 10m bid for Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink from Atletico Madrid. The Spanish club faxed an offer for Hasselbaink on Tuesday and repeated it yesterday but Leeds have turned down both.

Hasselbaink has so far refused to sign a new long-term contract but Leeds chairman Peter Ridsdale is adamant that the Dutch international striker will not be sold.

"Our aim is to build a winning side," Ridsdale said. "We have backed the manager throughout the summer and we have not spent pounds 15m just to go and sell our top scorer from the past two years"

Hasselbaink, who cost pounds 2m from Portuguese side Boavista two summers ago, has been offered a lucrative new contract even though he has two years to run on his current deal.

Lazio owner Sergio Cragnotti has confirmed that nearly two months of on-off talks to buy French striker Nicolas Anelka from Arsenal are now finally at an end.

Lazio's agent Vincenzo Morabito earlier claimed the deal was definitively off because no agreement could be found over the money for either the transfer, the player's terms or the agents' fees.

That breakdown was confirmed in Rome by Cragnotti, who publicly broke off talks last week, as he made his way into a business meeting.

"The soap opera is over," said the Lazio owner, who had wanted to sign Anelka as a replacement for Christian Vieri, sold to Internazionale last month for pounds 31m.

Morabito said: "The impossibility of lowering the fees for the agents, of reviewing the player's contract" and above all "the crazy and totally unrealistic" demands from Arsenal.

"A player who is 20 years old with one year's experience in the Premier League and is rated at 70 billion lira (pounds 22m) is madness," he said.

Morabito added: "We did everything we could. We wanted to bring Anelka to Rome at all costs, but we didn't succeed because Arsenal's demands were crazy and unreasonable."

Another young player who looks set to make his mark - though in his case in a positive manner - is Shaun Wright, teenage son of the former Arsenal striker Ian, who made an impressive debut for Manchester City against Everton in Wednesday's friendly.

City manager Joe Royle was delighted with his 30-minute run- out and predicted it will be the first of many appearances.

"Shaun has got the lot and he is not far away from the side," Royle said. "He wasn't fazed by his debut at all."