“I have told him I would be very happy for him to see out his contract with us but it is his choice and that is the way it has to be.”The Liverpool defender St?ane Henchoz will not play again this season, his manager, G?rd Houllier, said yesterday. The Swiss international has not featured in the first team since having calf surgery after the League Cup final victory over Manchester United on 2 March.. As reports last night suggested that David Beckham is actively pursuing a transfer from Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson closed in on a potential successor to the England captain. United are hoping to complete a £10m deal for the highly rated Portuguese winger Ricardo Quaresma, with talks planned next week with his club, Sporting Lisbon.

It was reported last night that within hours of the final whistle he had told his agent to seek a move.The defeat by Real seems certain to lead to changes at Old Trafford and Quaresma may be the first arrival as Ferguson looks for an injection of youth. Unlike Quaresma, Bellion is expected to be a squad man.The Bolton manager, Sam Allardyce, has made a £700,000 bid to Lyon for the French centre-half, Florent Laville, who has been on loan at the Reebok where he played a major role in Bolton’s push for safety. However, he has attracted interest from other Premiership sides.Shaun Goater will leave Manchester City in the summer. The Swiss international had calf surgery early last month.The Blackburn Rovers manager, Graeme Souness, is close to signing the Rangers captain, Lorenzo Amoruso, for £1.5m, and the Glasgow club is likely to replace him with Dundee’s 21-year-old Georgian defender, Zurab Khizanishvili..

Salary capping will be introduced into English football for the first time next season as part of a wide-ranging reform programme agreed by the Football League’s 72 clubs yesterday. Clubs will not be allowed to spend more than 60 per cent of their turnover on players’ wages and not more than 75 per cent of their turnover on all their staff costs combined.There will be no punishment for failure to comply although sanctions – as yet unspecified – are possible at some stage in the future. The aim is to force clubs to keep their spending at sustainable levels. If the experiment is successful, it will be expanded across the divisions.

The move could help see a landmark shift away from profligacy and towards a healthier, more sustainable future for the game.Another innovation with the same aim was also agreed in principle yesterday when the clubs gave their approval to “sporting sanctions” for any clubs who go into administration. The details have yet to be thrashed out – a process that could take a year or more – but the sanctions could include a deduction of points or relegation. Serial offenders could be punished with expulsion from the League. The earliest the sanctions will be in place will be the 2004-05 season.A third major decision yesterday saw the clubs agree to an expansion of the end-of-season play-offs from four clubs to six clubs from next season. The format of the play-offs will also be amended, with the aim of giving an advantage to the sides finishing immediately behind the two automatic promotion places in each division.Under the new system, the teams finishing eighth in each division will play a one-leg tie away against the teams finishing fifth.