Levein ready to join Leicester

Craig Levein is expected to be confirmed as the new Leicester City manager later today.

Craig Levein is expected to be confirmed as the new Leicester City manager later today, despite the efforts of the new Hearts owner, Vladimir Romanov, to retain the services of the 40-year-old, who is widely regarded as one of the brightest young prospects to emerge from Scottish football.

Levein attended a meeting with the Lithuanian banker last night, hours after Hearts refused Leicester's first request for official permission to open negotiations with the former Scottish international. During the talks with Romanov he expressed his desire to talk to the Championship side.

Romanov has made no secret of his desire to keep Levein, who has guided Hearts into the Uefa Cup for the last three seasons, but he relented over Leicester's request to approach Levein when the manager indicated that he would like to take on the challenge of English football, because of the difficulty of breaking the stranglehold of Rangers and Celtic in Scotland.

Leicester are ready to offer the Hearts manager a two-and-a-half-year contract and have made it clear they are prepared to pay the £250,000 compensation clause to secure his release from the Scottish Premier League club.

They are quietly confident that Levein will agree terms of around £350,000-a-year during negotiations with the director of football Dave Bassett, who has been in temporary charge of Leicester since Micky Adams' surprise resignation almost three weeks ago.

Levein is expected to travel with the Leicester team for their game at Cardiff, but Bassett will remain in charge of team affairs, before handing over the reins on Monday. Bassett will remain as director of football, but the return to the game of former FA technical director Howard Wilkinson as his assistant will be a short-lived one. Levein has already lined up his Hearts assistant, Peter Houston, to be his No 2 at the Walkers Stadium.